Nicole Tilley

Nicole Tilley investigates the idea of the threshold – a boundary between one condition and another and the potential for change. Her work points to movement, transition and metamorphosis. She knowingly references classical children’s book illustration and it is her hope that the viewer will engage with this. Her work operates on both an intellectual and sensual level. She is deeply interested in working with shadows and often the work is equally about the shadow cast as it is about the object. For her the interaction between viewer and object, the flickering middle space is, perhaps, where the art lies.

Her work includes an archive of characters that exist in her imagination in a liminal state, upon the threshold between her mind and their drawn, etched, cut or sewn manifestations. Heroes and heroines from bedtime stories, beloved pets and threadbare toys co-exist with many others in a mental compost heap of collective and personal shared experience and imagery.