Carla Busuttil @ Josh Lilley
Notions of identity play heavily on Carla Busuttil’s work. Her paintings are portraits of a society that none of us know but we can all probably relate to in one way or another. The characters appropriate costumes and emblems of structure and order, liberating them from their original context. There is a whiff of irony, the canvases look as if they had been dragged backwards through a Vintage shop in Shoreditch.
An innocent escapism runs through the show. A cast of characters created entirely in the mind, obsessively so. Normally only a child would have the stamina of imagination to create such an expansive fantasy world. But Carla continually re visits it, as if the paintings offer a surrogate family or imaginary gang of friends for the artist.
I’m not a massive fan of the canvases. “Bad Painting” can at times be liberating and joyous for the soul but I yearned for a little more craft. I was much more impressed with the film work that was produced in collaboration with Thomas Voelker and the Static Hand. Here we saw characters from Busuttil’s repertoire take on a 3 dimensional forms – coldly and repetitively ripping up newspapers into tiny pieces, as if wiping history, all set to a moody and industrial soundtrack. It was Ace.
Busuttil should release her creations from the walls and give them space to play around more often. She needs to capture her imaginary world on film more, perhaps even creating her own “Cremaster Cycle”.
Only then will we get a sense of the true depths of her imagination.
Runs til 4th October
Watching dry paint. 