When the Silent One Acrylic

Nice/Not Nice is a series of paintings that sit in the space between form and unease. Each work begins with colour, often bold, and abstract shapes before the eye settles on what lives within or around them: a cigarette, a shape of a lipstick, the unsettling geometry of an orchid. These are objects loaded with performance and the rituals we use to arrange ourselves before the world. William's background as an actor and singer runs through the work. These are not still lifes so much as props, the things we reach for when we are constructing a version of ourselves to show to others. What we reveal and what we conceal, what is nice for public consumption and what the not-nice truth might be underneath. As a queer artist returning again and again to questions of identity and visibility, William finds in these small, intimate objects a way to ask something large, about performance, about the stories we tell ourselves in private and the ones we dare to tell out loud.