Neon Parc

‘Solastalgia’ presents a series of Janet Burchill’s recent tie-dye paintings, produced using fibre reactive dyes. For these paintings, Burchill draws upon a lexicon of recently developed terms that seek to articulate the emotions associated with living in our uncertain contemporary world—rife as it is with geopolitical tensions and climate crises. Take, for example, ‘solastalgia’, a term developed by the environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht defined as “the homesickness you have when you are still at home,” caused by negatively perceived environmental change. Not unlike the words referenced, Burchill’s tie-dyed works are deliberately ambiguous—mirroring the sense of uncertainty that has become so familiar in our daily lives. Evoking imagery suggestive of flames, satellite images or microscopic bacterial growth, Burchill’s paintings convey the tenor of what it means to live in our world today.

Burchill/McCamley’s ‘Simone Weil Project: Human Personality’ comprises a series of new silkscreen paintings, continuing the artists’ long-term project looking at the life and writings of the philosopher, political activist and mystic Simone Weil (1909–43). Female writers have been regular subject matter for Burchill and McCamley. The artists were particularly drawn to Weil because of the “extraordinary intensity and precision” of her writings and the concern for justice which permeated her life and thought. In this new series, the artists have overlaid a found image of Weil’s face, her eyes closed, mid-blink, with excerpts from Weil’s text Human Personality (1942-43), written at the end of her life. Through a process of colour manipulation, image shifting and repetition, Burchill and McCamley present Weil’s visage as fractured and multiplied—a portrait refracted through time.