The light that spills across the ground between shadows

Lillian O'Neil makes collages about the human condition, using found imagery from pre-digital books and magazines. Bodies take on peculiar hybrid characteristics, surfaces merge with print textures, and the boundaries between body, architecture, day, night, earth and sky disintegrate. O'Neil's large-format collages consider ideas about the self and multiplicity of selves during matrescence—the physical, hormonal, and emotional period of mother-becoming. Informed by her experiences of having two children during lockdown in rural Victoria, O'Neil approaches imagining the body and its psychic space during this period. The exhibition title references Annie Ernaux's book The Years (2008), in which the writer uses photographs to frame her life within larger narratives of history and culture.