Lillian O'Neil
Dawn

I make large scale analogue collages with pre-digital photographic imagery that I cut from books and magazines. A significant part of my practice is the sourcing of new material. My studio is a chaotic library.

I took the Ideas Platform as an opportunity to experiment with scanning an archive of Australian women’s magazines held by the State Library of Victoria, material that I couldn’t cut up. My interest lies in the photography of cultural histories and the materiality of obsolete print technologies. The magazines I looked at spanned ‘The Dawn’ 1888-1905, to 'Australian Women’s Forum’ 1991 -2001.

For seven years, Lillian O’Neil has worked with analogue photographic material from pre-digital archives to create large-scale, highly-detailed collages that are image atlases – both encyclopaedic and kaleidoscopic. She completed a Master of Fine Art at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney in 2014. Recent solo exhibitions include Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo, 2019; and Tertium Quid, The Commercial, Sydney, 2018. In 2013, she was included in In the Cut – collage as idea, curated by Hannah Mathews, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Collections include the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Artbank and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide. She is represented by The Commercial, Sydney.