East, London
Siobhan Liddell
Dusk
Hollybush GardensSiobhan Liddell’s work delves into felt moments from the most mundane to the monumental. The buildings, landscapes, gardens and bedrooms, journey us through the multilayered nature of being alive; the subtlety, complexity and intensity of loving, longing and losing. Both melancholy and playfulness are woven through the imagery, where we find echoes of bodies, faces and animals. The ceramic objects cleverly interact in these scenes, challenging our perception of form and space. Lived narratives can be seen and felt, yet the deeper stories within the imagery ultimately remain elusive. As a good poem loses its nuance when explained, Liddell’s paintings thrive in their enigmatic essence. While rarely explicitly autobiographical or diaristic, Liddell reminisces on the external world to approach the kernels of her own being; looking elsewhere to see oneself. Attachment and suspense have remained core qualities distinguishing Liddell’s work, in the expanded sense of their metaphorical (and, I would suggest, autobiographical) nature. Undoubtedly, the landscapes alluded to in the paintings – from mountainous British scenery to the urban fabrics of New York – have soaked up Liddell’s memories of a life lived in devotion to the fossils of touch, fusing materiality and emotion. —Ksenia M. Soboleva