Camouflage: A solo show by Lindsey Bull

A desire to dress up and try on another persona characterises Lindsey Bull’s band of misfits and outsiders, and in her new series Camouflage, their likeness to fashion imagery has been illuminated.

These paintings carry the sense of performance and un-reality always present in fashion shoots and magazines. As is also the case with counter-culture movements, this has on one hand a level of absurdity, and on the other a real sense of trying to communicate through the language of costume.

There is an element of performance and theatre in putting on costumes and make-up to transcend and become someone else, to seek another truth. Bull is interested in this transition and slippage between personas, gender and psychologies. That her characters are absurdly overdressed for the landscape they inhabit further suggests that this is some kind of performance or private ritual.

Bull plays with this sense of something being obviously present but also hidden within this new series of paintings. Camouflage is referenced within the clothing, but also through painterly marks. Figure and landscape often blur into each other,suggestive of the figure being part of the landscape. Yet, taken out of context, camouflage becomes glaringly obvious, doing the opposite of its purpose. It reveals.