#83 (Towards the Vanishing Point of Art)

Elizabeth Pulie has been exploring the possibilities of painting over the last three decades. Her research-led practice places equal emphasis on the conceptual and the material and her work often possesses a distinctive decorative sensibility. Pulie’s practice deftly flirts with the line between fine art and craft to examine the philosophy, aesthetic value and commodification of decorative arts and female labour. Her early work was grounded in large-scale acrylic paintings and in more recent years she has turned to experimentation with new materials and processes, most notably textiles, working fabrics such as hessian, jute, cotton and linen into capes, banners and large-scale, graphically patterned and overtly sculptural paintings.

In '#83 (Towards the Vanishing Point of Art)' 2018, the human form is evoked by the bodily contours of the fabric which, when installed, echoes the form of a cape whose illusive wearer appears to have vanished into the wall. The overtly feminine nature of this work, covered in flowers and topped with a bow, is undercut by roughness of the hessian.

This work fits into Pulie’s longstanding project ‘The End of Art’, which comprises a series of painted textile works that each take their title from a chapter in Jean Baudrillard’s book, 'The Conspiracy of Art'. This work also references Kazimir Malevich’s famous ‘Black square’ as the end point of representational art through its title ‘Towards the Vanishing Point of Art’ and the use of a solid black ground in the body of the cape. The choice of materials in this work represents a sentimental embrace of Pulie’s childhood involvement with crafts such as weaving and macramé. The use of materials also recalls the radicalism of late modernist movements where traditionally, women were relegated to outsider positions, introducing their own language and materials such as fabrics and weaving to an otherwise overtly masculine sphere.