NEON
Private Collection
exhibited in:
THREESOME
New Art Projects, London 2018
THREESOME
The Gallery, Liverpool 2018
SCOPE ART FAIR
TW Fine Art, Miami, Florida, USA 2023
"Halls’ paintings employ their own adroit strategies of resistance to the tired tropes of female representation. The flesh tones of her heroic protagonists have been denatured by a saturation of neon colour, their stylised poses all uncannily performative, frozen in a gestural polari. Each is flanked by a triumvirate of characters from a very specific history of queer cinema, that of the lesbian as seen by male directors. The actresses who played these roles have been replaced by mannequins who are mere approximations of the original women. Thus, questions about authenticity and spectatorship circulate these iconographic portraits.
Halls’ paintings employ adroit strategies of resistance to the tired tropes of female representation. The flesh tones of her heroic protagonists are denatured by a saturation of neon colour, their stylised gestures uncannily performative. Each is flanked by characters from a specific history of queer cinema, that of the lesbian as seen by male directors. The actresses are replaced by mannequins, mere approximations of the original women. Questions about authenticity and spectatorship circulate these iconographic portraits.
In her THREESOME portraits, Halls' protagonists flesh tones are denatured in saturated neon, their stylised gestures an uncannily performative 'polari'. Flanked by characters from the history of queer cinema, replaced by mannequins, mere approximations of the original women."