DEATH PROOF

Helen Shelley

21 May - 26 June 2010 | CCAS Gorman MAINSpace

‘We find messages of death and danger almost everywhere. On the nightly news, in the medical column, on the health channel, in the images of the homeless and the AIDS-inflicted, in the junk mail, in the public service advisories, in the supermarket tabloids and in their cult worship of the celebrity dead.' - Don DeLillo

This excerpt begins Don DeLillo's essay 'Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson and The Millennium', and while DeLillo's writing betrays a much bleaker perspective than the paintings of Helen Shelley, their underlying preoccupation appears to be the same; the fear of death. Shelley's paintings on Perspex are a much more personal probe into this anxiety. Her theatrical recreations of death in portraits of friends 'playing dead' offer a spine tingling sight. For her 2010 show at CCAS, Shelley presents a continued meditation on contemporary imagery associated with death, skipping from popular culture and fashion to historical painting. (Liang Luscombe, 2010)

Image: Helen Shelley, Immortality Without The Assistance Of God, 2010, Acrylic and oil on Perspex.