Award-winning photographic artist Lilli Waters unveils her latest solo exhibition today, Orpheus, at Metro Gallery in Armadale Melbourne. 

The exhibition features a series of 10 large-scale photographs and moving image artworks constructed in Lilli’s striking signature style; underwater, using shells, fish and flowers, and the female form. The result is an ethereal and other-wordly visual. 

Lilli’s work with jewel-like clusters of flowers is reminiscent of 17th century Dutch masterpieces, yet they’re unexpectedly joined by suffocating cellophane, or are shrouded by gold nets. The series of vignettes offers a nuanced mix of hope and despair, promise and foreboding. Created during lockdown last year, they speak to a sense of entrapment whilst inviting the viewer to move out of the darkness and into the light. 

‘We are living through an age where our lens on the world must constantly shift and refocus as new ideas, crises, social movements and the natural environment change rapidly,’ says Lilli. 

The exhibition’s namesake, Orpheus (a poet, prophet and musician in Greek mythology) is represented in Lilli’s work as a woman. 

‘For these images I wanted Orpheus to be a woman, who is oracle-like and asleep on a dark sandscape. The viewer is invited to embrace their own morality and energy for change simultaneously,’ she explains. 

Much like Lilli’s other work, this exhibition promises to delight visually – and provoke deep thought! 

‘Orpheus’ by Lilli Waters
February 2nd to February 26th
Opening night February 2nd, from 6-8pm

Metro Gallery
1214 High Street, Armadale
Free entry

For more of Lilli Waters’ work, visit her website, here.