There’s a huge revival of materials in this year’s biennials. Craft has become such a significant part of how artists tell stories that it’s actually quite rare to see an exhibition that doesn’t present something using materials that remind us of home.
Xanthe Tilzey’s paintings, made on adapted and stuffed canvases skew their fabric into something completely different, while Elisa Sallis’ rug tufting draws on the method and purpose of a very traditional craft.
Both hold their subject to account in an exhibition that’s just as tongue in cheek as it is serious. The show, How to Wear High Heels, explores what it means to be a feminine artist.
Makeup, fashion and homemaking are forced together in what they call an ‘ultra-over-stylised vision’ that offers viewers a chance to reflect on what femininity means to them, through the eyes of two artists, who are as ambiguous about their feelings towards the identity they focus on as they are about which of them made which work.
In some cases, it’s quite clear, where Elisa Sallis’ tightly-crafted rugs speak uniquely about her own practice, and Xanthe Tilzey’s painted fabrics present a personal perspective on creature comforts that seem to relate more to previous generations than their own. In others, like most of the work in the central island, it doesn’t seem to matter who made what.
Their collaborative approach to a single idea has resulted in an exhibition that makes a joke of traditional ideas of femininity in order to break them down into something wholly less threatening. Like a signal that they’ve seen the problem, and it’s not about to take them by surprise.
The exhibition was one of The Royal Standard’s short-run exhibitions in this year’s Independents Biennial, but if you go down the gallery pretty much any weekend between now and September, there will be an exhibition showing the culmination of ideas by local artists and, so far, they’re all worth seeing.
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How to Wear High Heels ran from 23rd-25th June 2023, but you can follow the artists on Instagram at @leeleepants and @xtilzey to keep up to date with their evolving works.
Words, Kathryn Wainwright