John McDonald, National Treasures, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 April 2023
Excerpt: Perhaps it’s the challenge of those towering ceilings, but Elizabeth Day has made a huge effort with an installation that covers a wall at Carriageworks with wool unravelled from old garments. In The Flow of Form: There’s a Reason Beyond Reason (1797 Parramatta Gaol), Carriageworks Redfern, Day has re-created a phantom image of the facade of the old Parramatta Gaol, coated in clusters of threads, in the manner of a quilt or tapestry.
The sheer scale of the work lends it a sense of drama, while the bunches of coloured threads mimic an Abstract Expressionist canvas. Day, who has spent much of her career working with people in prisons and mental institutions, has taken this opportunity to create a piece about the many lives that have disappeared behind closed doors. Each unravelled garment suggests an anonymous person closeted away from friends and family. Day conjures up the “broken threads” of personal relationships, with all that colour concealing a great weight of melancholy.
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ELIZABETH DAY 