Camilla Connolly

New Works

The haunting, expressionist works of Camilla Connolly strike an uneasy chord, bringing to our consciousness notions of suffering, the marginalised and the plight of fallen women. Appropriating the 1950s-60s imagery of Angry Penguins - Nolan, Tucker and Boyd, Connolly tells challenging stories of colourful Australians, and draws on her own years spent within the grip of addiction in Sydney’s salubrious Kings Cross.

This latest body of work again follows incidents of women in the landscape, with as its central figure, infamous madam, Matilda “Tilly” Devine. Tilly loomed large as undisputed queen of Sydney’s underworld throughout the 30s and 40s. Born Matilda Twiss in London, she met WW1 digger, George Devine and came out to Australia to join him.
Underground rivalries, gang battles, murder and money became Tillys world, and for protection, she headed up one of Sydney’s most vicious gangs. Tilly quickly became Sydney’s richest woman, but hers was a life of betrayal, struggle, fear and addiction, themes which parallel closely the artist’s own experience.

“My personal interest in Tilly Devine was rekindled when working on Scotland Island with Master printmaker, Paul Smith. A few doors up from the Smith’s is an old house once owned by Tilly Devine. She would bring the tired and worn out prostitutes to this safe-house when they were in need of a break from their nightly working life. Tilly supplied her “girls” with cocaine, which bound them into a kind of servitude once they became dependent. I here began the first drawings of Tilly Devine, her girls and her boatman… focusing once again on “fallen women”… and reworking Dante’s boatman Charon and the River Acheron in his famous epic, The Divine Comedy. I imagined the crossing of the waters as a kind of venture into hell – or nether regions of one’s soul. As an ex-worker I know only too well the “time out” periods are the most hellish, when you are confronted with yourself and the mess of your life. From these Scotland Island drawings, a whole new series of very Australian work with a narrative basis, and once again with a female as central protagonist, has unfolded”.
Camilla Connolly.

These provocative and powerful works entice with a richness of colour and form, as Connolly masterfully creates her powerful irony- female artist in male dominated modernist style. Like Nolan’s Kelly her heroines become legends and the stories, both historical and imaginative, live on in her work.

Brenda Colahan