2006 VENUS IN HELL

These works were part of the exhibition, Venus In Hell: New Works On Paper,
by Hazel Dooney at MARS Gallery, Port Melbourne, July, 2006.

There were various sources of inspiration for them, but mainly I had to
exorcise an intense curiosity about Haitian Voodoo and Central American
Santeria. My references to these religions’ syncretic rituals based on African
tribal rites and Catholicism mined a deep seam of inner personal conflict in
which contemporary agnostic rationality is pitted against ancient spirituality –
a desire for control against a fatalistic surrender to a ‘higher’ will.

Venus In Hell proved Dooney has both extraordinary depth as an artist and
a sound painterly technique.
- Clare Press, Vogue Australia, December, 2007

Related review: "Hazel Dooney and Creed O'Hanlon", Ashley Crawford
The Sunday Age Preview, 16 July 2006