‘Paintings’ – Sharon Hall

Sharon Hall’s paintings set the viewer a visual challenge. They combine abstraction with meticulously drawn images, which often layered over one another are set against fields of shimmering colour. Whilst aesthetically pleasing to look at, they demand that the viewer confront the underlying morals and ideas of the images she employs.

Hall extracts deliberately provocative images from satirical engravings emblem books and political broadsheets as early as the 16th Century, and also makes use of the grainy surfaces of the engravings and woodcuts from which they are taken.

These images are both amusing and absurd and the satirical comments they make are often as relevant as when they were made.