A longtime fan of rock music and a practising Buddhist, Nell combines religious, philosophical, and musical iconographies to create lighthearted yet contemplative artworks that explore the human condition. Among the motifs that recur across her works are the egg, stylised ghost figures, lightning bolts, smiley faces, crosses, and teardrops.
Read MoreAs Nell said in her 2021 conversation with Ocula Magazine, her sculptures, paintings, installations, performances, and public art are 'always exploring thresholds of binary opposites': black and white, feminine and masculine, life and death, and the sacred and profane.
In her work, Nell places emphasis on the relationship between the individual and the whole. Unlimited Radiance (2001), housed in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney, depicts a sunset made from nearly 20,000 sequins. Each sequin glistens under the light: a miniaturised version of the sun they represent when viewed as a whole.
Two species appear in the installation, A white bird flies in the mist, a black bird flies in the night, a woman walks, wild and free, she is not afraid to die (2008). One of them is human, a woman who is rendered entirely in black save for her white eyes and a white staff in her hand. She is trailed by small, glass ghosts, though whether they are haunting or following her is unclear.
Nell employs the figure of the egg, a symbol of rebirth and regeneration, to contemplate ideas of mortality and cycles of birth and death. Appearing in her paintings and sculptures, the motif reflects Nell's interest in spiritual traditions, which she has been pursuing since Australian artist Lindy Lee introduced her to Zen Buddhism in the mid-1990s.
Nell's 2004 solo exhibition at Sydney's Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Who Made Who, featured numerous artworks revolving around the motif of the egg. A bird spreads its wings inside the egg of the painting, Egg of Eye Heart, with a small crack in its chest that suggests imminent birth, while the gold-leafed egg sculpture, Who Made Who, evokes the-chicken-or-the-egg question by repeating the title across its surface (both 2004).
A range of conical and mound-like shapes, including the egg, compose The Wake (2014–2016): a group of hand-sculpted ceramic vessels that Nell presented in the 2016 Adelaide Biennial. With faces made by holes cut into the ceramic, the sculptures express a range of emotions across humour, sadness, and shock. Nell began the work after she lost her son through stillbirth, as a form of meditation and healing.
Music and art are inseparable for Nell, who told Ocula Magazine that she is 'always thinking about how a painting might sound'. Rock Gate, made for the 2019 Sydney Contemporary, is a sonic sculpture: using amplifiers, the artist built a Japanese shinto torii gate that was then activated through performances by solo female guitarists.
Nell is also known for employing symbols and merchandise from the rock band, AC/DC, in her works. In 2011, the artist was commissioned by the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart to create Let There be Robe, an installation consisting of drumsticks arranged into crosses on the wall, and a Zen Buddhist costume adorned with a patchwork of AC/DC t-shirts. The title derives from Let There Be Rock, AC/DC's 1977 studio album.
Religious iconography and rock aesthetics also merge in works such as Mother of the Dry Tree (2017), a painting that shows a tree and two egg-shaped figures. The smaller of the two eggs appears to radiate white light, in contrast with a larger, white egg resting on the tree, surrounded by leaves shaped like the 'A' in the AC/DC logo. Taking inspiration from The Virgin of the Dry Tree (c.1465), a small votive painting of Madonna and Child by Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus, Nell creates an unusual yet intimate portrait of mother and son.
In 2019, Nell presented Eveleigh Tree House, a public installation of two elevated treehouses connected by a low walkway that was commissioned by Carriageworks and Mirvac for South Eveleigh, Sydney. Collaborating with the design firm, Cave Urban, the artist put out an open call for volunteers to create metal eucalyptus leaves using Victorian blacksmithing techniques. The leaves, made by over 400 members of the public, were then assembled into the treehouses resembling gumnuts, the fruit of eucalyptus trees.
Nell was the founding director of Rubyayre, an artist-run gallery in Sydney that operated between 1999 and 2001. She has been exhibiting with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery since 2001 and held her first major retrospective exhibition, NE/LL, at Victoria's Shepparton Art Museum in 2016.
Nell has also exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions that include I SAW the LIGHT, STATION, Melbourne (2021); Blessings, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (2018); Black n' White, Project Space, Amsterdam (2015); Let There Be Robe, Alaska Projects (2013) and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (2015), Sydney; Hometown Girl Has Wet Dream, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales (2012); Life and Death, ARTBAR, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2012).
Selected group exhibitions include Know My Name, National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Canberra (2020); Hope Dies Last: Art at the End of Optimism, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (2018); The National: New Australian Art 2017, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Australia, Sydney (2017); _The World Within: The Julian & Stephanie Grose Collectio_n, The Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2017); PULSE: Reflections on the body, Canberra Museum and Gallery (2014).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2021
