Inkjet print on canvas with beaded panels
220 x 220cm

Collishaw’s Insecticide works are large photographic prints of butterflies and other insects crushed between the glass plates of a 35mm slide; ravishing images of death. Here Williamson has embellished a broken butterfly with delicate panels of beading and gems that pick out the highlights of its iridescent scales. Each individual sequin stands proud of the canvas at varying heights, giving the beading a three-dimensional, contoured relief, like a gorgeous exotic fungus sprouting from image. Lepiszoulo is an invented word from the Greek roots zoulo, to crush, and lepis, meaning flake or scale – referring both to the magnified scales of the butterfly’s wing and to the individual scales of the sequins that adorn it.