HOLLYGREENWOOD CHAMELEONS
Holly Greenwood | Chameleons
OLSEN GALLERY, 28 May - 21 June, 2025
At the pub with Holly Greenwood
Holly and I walk into the Old Fitz, we order two schooners of Victorian Bitter and look for the darkest corner to settle down in. I notice her gaze creeping in and falling for the way a stranger curls their legs under the table. Holly Greenwood finds pure love in the most unlikely places. These pub scenes express relentless affection for the souls tucked away in an angelic state of dissociation. All bets are simultaneously off and on while we lay ourselves bare. Remorse is for the morning. A doctrine where sinners become saints at the wonky alter, baptised, and exposed by tapped truth serum. In these moments we are fear and loathing, we are fear unloading, locked into pure trust, a skinless vulnerability. Holly’s figures like ghosts enmeshed into their environment represent a hazy memory, soft faded lipliner. She’s teaching us to see human nature basic and beautiful. There is a romance in wanting to disappear limp like boiled noodles or bread soaked in milkthese fingers, these limbs soften and purge anew. Redemption washes over me as my own thoughts quiet down, what they call the black dog is curled up and sleeping by the fire. Forgive me for myself, while I am here with you, see me at my worst and love me more. I swear this person’s face is skidding down their bones, but my vision is blurred, Holly’s brush marks like the neon kebab sign transfixed up ahead. The VB is shimmering, eyelid peeling beauty is everywhere. And when the night turns cold and our eyes go black, will I feel you riding on my back? Wings outstretched, one shoe missing, for I am part of you, we are everything. Our mini apocalypse before last drinks, before sunrise. But for now, in the soft warm light we are glistening, slumped and in love. Crinkled into a spiritual trigonometry, a perfectly propped schooner, an elbow, a stool. An angel till the morning delivering wounds and slurs. It’s a church of blurred edges melding into each other. I am the old bloke; I am the ear for the sermon drenched in absolutes. Pouring rich average wisdom down my throat.
“And I will be changed from the creature that I am - oh yeh”
- Jedda Daisy Culley, 2025
Holly Greenwood
Chameleons, 2025
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Holly Greenwood