The theme of love and the investigation of the creation of emotional narratives through a process of collection and assessment is central to Lillian O’Neil’s work. She uses monumentally-scaled collage to explore possibilities of accumulative autobiography and is interested in the way aggregated images compress time and history.
Read MoreLillian O'Neil's billboard, Moon Lovers, commissioned by the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, for the CCP/City of Yarra Billboard, is on display until February 2014. O’Neil has been awarded numerous grants including those from the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Victoria, Melbourne City Council, the Besen Foundation and traveling awards from both Monash University and Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. She will be having a solo show at The Commercial Gallery, Sydney in 2014.
Her work is held in the Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide, and private collections in Sydney, Melbourne, London and New York.
She compled a Master of Fine Art at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney, with an Australian Postgraduate Award supervised by artist, Mikala Dwyer.
From 2007 until 2010, O’Neil (b. 1985, Melbourne) was part of the Melbourne-based collaborative group, Safari Team, but has since been producing solo work. Her solo exhibitions include Total Romance, The Commercial Gallery, Sydney (2013), Cream at Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney (2010) and Love Machine at MOP, Sydney (2012).
Group exhibitions include In the Cut, curated by Hannah Matthews, at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Pantone 705 C, The Mews Project Space, London, Living in the Ruins of the Twentieth Century, curated by Adam Jasper and Holly Williams, UTS Gallery, The University of Technology, Sydney (all 2013); THREE/THREE at The Commercial Gallery, Sydney (2012) (this exhibition featured O’Neil’s epic collage, Attack of the Romance); House of Love at Seventh Gallery, Melbourne (2011); Super Market (curated by Kim Brockett) at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces (2010); Evolution, as part of the Next Wave Festival, Melbourne (2010); Group Group Show (curated by DAMP), at Margaret Laurence Gallery, Melbourne (2008). As Safari Team, O’Neil exhibited in a collaborative solo exhibition, Molto Morte, that toured in Australia and Canada (international venues were Galerie VAV, Concordia University, Montréal and Lab Synthèse, Montréal).
