Lizza Littlewort

Lizza’s work has often been described as satire because she uses traditional satirical elements like speech balloons and drawings reminiscent of old Punch cartoons. From this position she makes forays into “Art”, interacting with its fuzzy edges and funny definitions. Her range of work stretches into serious-looking paintings which reveal themselves as cartoons, and cartoons which are deadly serious. This way of working interacts with the rich comic content of contemporary art, but also allows Lizza to pull away from “Art” at any time, into the role of commentator and confused onlooker.
Her strategy is born out of a bringing-together of insights gained during a long and chequered career. Lizza was involved for many years in an educational comics collective with the now-famous Zapiro and others, during which time she made ‘photo-novellas’ and graphic novels aimed at empowering marginalised communities of youth in South Africa. She has thus been through the unusual experience of workshopping and testing ideas outside of the confines of middle-class South African art circles. This has had a strong effect on her desire to break down and interrogate rarified assumptions common in the art world.

Excerpt from essay by Robert Sloon,’Pulling the wool over ones eyes leaves the belly cold.’
(This essay was written as an introduction to the picture book ‘The World didn’t End in Disaster’ by Lizza Littlewort.)

Lizza Littlewort’s work has always awed me. She has the guts to be political and legible in her work at the same time. This may seem like an easy combination, but so much contemporary art shies away from one or the other, either being mindlessly personal or having a simple point obscured beyond interpretation.
Legibility doesn’t preclude eloquence as this book, The World Didn’t End in Disaster, amply shows. It’s a grim story, but it is well told by an artist fully in control of the tools she uses: the tone of the text and that of the illustrations are perfectly matched, the colour pushes the pace of the story and the line is as
dreadful and funny as the content.

…

Using the mode of a kiddy book also allows many opportunities for satire. The image of friendly Daryl and Merril from Fox News is my favourite, though it’s a close contest between generous Rex W Tillerson and smiling President Giuliani for second. Satire isn’t only apparent in the visuals, it is embedded into the very nature of the storytelling style. The tone, hysterically upbeat, is spot on. It mimics the tone of TV, the main disseminator (appropriately, fox is a synonym of trick), and it mimics the tone of happy compliance in our heads. At some point the unstoppable chirpiness stops reading as satire. As the people become more and more deluded, it tilts on mania which is commonly followed by a crushing suicidal depression. This bipolar stance characterises the book. It is funny and serious, light and grim, teasing and frightening, fictional and accurate. Lizza’s own dilemma is ironically summed up in this: the tension between creating and not, between saying something and no-one listening. The audience for art has to be coddled, but not saying something is perhaps even worse, it allows those CEO’s to seem normal.

It would be too easy to interpret this story, like one can with most satire, as bitter, cynical and ironic. And no doubt, all those traits are abundant. However, being familiar with Lizza’s work in general leads me to see these qualities more as justified anger, healthy realism and perceptive wit. One could also drop the term paranoid. And indeed it is a paranoid story, but as Woody Allen (or was it William Burroughs?) said: “Just because you’re not paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

In conclusion, a small observation: Martha Stewart’s pie matches the stain of the stomped lone protester matches the ghastly sky as the screens fade. The tale is told in this harmony of colours alone. And with that, my silent applause.

Selected Exhibitions

Click on selected solo exhibition title links below to view detailed information and images.