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From: PRESS RELEASE
Date: 29 Oct 2010
Time: 11:18:06 -0500
LIZ NEAL - WHATEVER IS WRONG WITH ELIZABETH JANE? New Multimedia Installation Exhibition: November 11th - December 2th 2010 Liz Neal has never been one to shy away from the grim realities of life, the birds and the bees in all their bestial glory. When asked about her upcoming show at Sartorial Contemporary Art, her reply was as enticing as it was vague, “I shall be lifting my petticoats slightly”. But if Neal’s back-catalogue is anything to go by, we should all beware what lurks beneath those silken ruffles. The fruits of her labour furnish viewers with a heady mix of the tawdry and the painstakingly poured over. “Paintings, embroideries, hand crafted objects, sculptures and installations which reference sexual, consumer and fantasy imagery”. Neal is a dichotomous art deviant. The provincial meets the pornographic, the domestic meets the drug-addled, the regal meets the ravaged. Working from her Welsh hideaway the artist offers dispatches from the frontline of a life racked by dependence and obsession. Creating evocative and powerful works, selflessly channeling the feelings most would try to suppress. Comfy homespun charm interspersed with the brash and the brazen, quotes from such visionary minds as Mo Slater from Eastenders, despairing cries muffled by a meticulously crafted homage to household banality. Wolves of lurid reality in sickly sweet sheep’s clothing. The title of her latest Sartorial installation is characteristically charged with self-derision. “Whatever Is Wrong With Elizabeth Jane?” The show centres on a chandelier crafted from empty vodka bottles, and a plethora of booze-soaked mementos. Masterfully mutilated beer can flower arrangements. Hand-embroidered pill packaging, pizza boxes, hallmarks of a lifestyle unraveling, celebrated and sanctified. Famed for bringing us spaces filled with lusty flesh, cabinets of carnal curiousity, Neal’s “sexually charged examination of consumerism, the cult of lifestyle and desire” has been exhibited as far afield as Moscow’s M'ars Gallery, and (through her close connection to Sartorial Director, Greta Sarfaty Marchant) Galeria Thomas Cohn, in Rio De Janiero. Yet never in all her travels has she left behind the turbulence that has so magnificently shaped her life and work. Opening Hours: Tuesday to Friday 13:00pm to 18:30pm or by appointment. Sartorial Contemporary Art, 26 Argyle Square, London, WC1H 8AP Tel/Fax: + 44 (0) 20 7837 1013 Email: art@sartorialart.com http://www.sartorialart.com/forthcoming.html