Sulis & The Wreck
06 June – 09 August 2025
Opening reception: Thursday, May 05, 6–8:30pm
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Sébastien Bertrand is pleased to present Sulis & The Wreck, Tali Lennox’s (1993, UK) second solo show at the gallery.
Across this collection of work that includes both paintings and drawings, artist Tali Lennox delves into a subaqueous dreamscape exploring the untamed intensity of her internal worlds on this dance through the carnival of the mind. Complex states of isolation and desire are traversed as Lennox pays reverence to outliers and social pariahs with an almost unhinged headyness, celebrating the fortresses hidden away within oneself and all the unknowable secrets of the soul.
The collection summons the golden bust of Sulis, a deity deeply connected to healing water. One interpreted meaning of the name Sulis is "Eye/Vision", cognate with Old Irish súil "eye. She was revered as both a nourishing, maternal goddess and also as an agent to effect punishments and curses on people at will, by the denial of sleep, by causing normal bodily functions to cease or even by death. The faraway gaze of the famous Sulis Minerva bust appears in the dissonant stare of Lennox’s subjects, their eyes fixed on a distant galaxy that only they can see.
Another particularly important real life figure is the enfant-martyre Jane Avril, a celebrated outsider and dancer of the Moulin Rouge who discovered her prodigal talent while residing at the Salpêtrière Asylum in Paris. Each year the women-only asylum would host the Bal de Folles, to which members of Parisian high society were invited to dance and socialize with the hospital residents. Patients were encouraged to dress up, dance, play music and sing as a form of artistic expression that walked the line between exhibitionism and macabre voyeurism. It was here that Jane Avril, (nicknamed La Mélinite, after an explosive) first experienced a wild and euphoric release through physical movement and found her signature contortive style.
As a child, Lennox experienced episodes of dream psychosis where her waking state and her subconscious would merge and cause her to experience both reality and her dream world in tandem. These episodes would instigate fits of uncontrollable thrashing. Like Jane, her body would feel expansive and transcendent, evocative of the outsized female figures in the paintings. Experiencing the terrifying ecstasy of these abnormal convulsions inspired this deep contemplation of mania and hysteria where the mind takes control of the body. Was this how it felt to be cursed by Sulis?
Eyes and their subsequent tears command many of the paintings, though not as an expression of sadness or hopelessness but more as an abundant catharsis, a purifying ritual like droplets of holy water. Like Sulis who was worshipped for her powers of healing, prophecy, and protection, all seeing eyes can be seen weeping high above the tableau’s, representing a higher power watching over the cycles and chaos of existence with love, guidance & wisdom.
Tali Lennox, The Lull, 2025
Oil on linen, 60 x 46 cm. / 23 ½ x 18 in.
(TL-2508)
Tali Lennox, Leaving Vesuvius, 2025
Oil on linen, 33 x 24 cm. / 13 x 9 ½ in.
(TL-2502)
“An eerie aqueous light bleeds across the collection, luring the viewer down to the depths of a potent and luminous twilight zone where reason and reality are disregarded. Varying shades of blue drench each figure, evoking the oxidation process of an excavated relic blistered by the air.
Tiny figures can be spotted animating the background of the paintings like distant mortals in a dream. Their presence neither startles nor scares the characters floating sensuously in the fore. Their plainess contrasts with the chimeric nature of the figures who merge into their animal masks and other adornments, exaggerating the chasm between the real world below and this wild arcadia.
Night time is celebrated here, being both a realm of sanctity and detachment. Lennox invokes the spirit of Hecate by exploring the potency of night time rituals and its power as a time for divine revelation, transformation and deliverance.
Hecate was the Greek Goddess of magic, crossroads, witchcraft, sorcery, ghosts and necromancy. Along with Selene and Artemis she is strongly associated with the moon and its power. Renowned for her love of isolation, Hedcate found herself more at home on the fringes than in the centre of Greek polytheism. She not only represented the beauty of moonlit nights but also served as a protective force for those who sought guidance under its light. A lover of solitude, she would walk out only at night or visit cemeteries during the dark phase of the moon, yet she was always depicted as shining or luminous with silver masks or adornments.
The colour silver holds special meaning throughout the collection with its reflective and sensitive qualities that inspire intuition, clairvoyance and mental telepathy. The colour represents the process of reflecting changes of personal direction by illuminating the path forward. It signifies the cleansing and releasing of mental, physical and emotional blockages.
Through a nuanced expansion around these varying ideas and figures, Lennox constructs a world at the convergence point of myth and existence. Past, present and future are all united to intersect across the canvases like falling stars. acquiescing to the vast abundance of this arcadian dreamscape. Lennox invites us to revel in the liberation and freedom that is found through embracing one's imagination and singularity, even if that takes you far, far away from reality.
2025
Oil on linen
33 x 24 cm. / 13 x 9 ½ in.
TL-2502