Artists sometimes use strange subjects to create a piece of aesthetic art - I ask you, can images of rotting fruit and human entrails be beautiful? Sully, an artist who does this is currently exhibiting at Persistence Works. She is a mixed media artist, incorporating installation, textiles and photography. Essentially a photographer, she captures grotesque still life images of human innards, squashed fruit and rubbish -blows them up, prints them on silk and other seductive fabrics, applies and embroiders them, thereby transforming them into sumptuous objects of beauty. But it is not just the fabric that is important, the careful choice of colours, deep, pungent and sensuous, also fool the viewer into believing that the objects are beautiful. The expected connotations disappear, although we are looking at raw flesh and rotting objects, there is something undeniably attractive about the work. "When photographed, printed on silky fabrics and transformed into different objects, such as handbags, they appear more beautiful," said Sully.
 | | Intestines image used for this handbag |
The 'Seven Deadly Sins' series features various bags. 'Gluttony' is a photograph of intestines, blown up to massive proportions, put on material, stitched and made into a large handbag; accentuating the idea of a colossal stomach. 'Anger' is a series of handbags that have been destroyed and burnt, then photographed and mixed with other rubbish and encased in a light box. 'Sloth' is aptly a sleeping bag; photographs of old wet newspapers and rotting fruit have been printed on fabric and made into sleeping bags, implying literally sleeping in your own squalor and filth (probably marketable at students). 'Nip and Tuck' is Sully's comment on Plastic surgery; large pieces of embroidered fabric, once again using photographed anatomical images, but this time with the pins left in. They raise issues regarding cosmetic surgery and the physical intervention to the human body coupled with personal adornment. There is something of the rich 17th Century Dutch still life painters in Sully's work – potential influences include Artists such as De Heem, and Willem Kalf who studied the contrasts and harmonies of colour and textiles, with such objects as coloured fruit and Persian carpets. Like the Dutch paintings, Sully's works appear haphazard, but are composed with care, with similar hidden symbolism of more complex ideas. Sully said, "my work reflects the complexities of the world we live in, portraying both its beauty and its decay." And indeed it does. This exhibition runs at Persistence Works on Brown Street, Sheffield until Wednesday, 15 December, 2004. Call 0114 2761769 or click on the link on the top right of this page for further information. | 
