Double-Sided Painting of Country and Kitchen Sink
Lillian Ross Millard
Double-Sided Painting of Country and Kitchen Sink is a performance trilogy of semi-true stories about Canada and the artist's personal folk narrative. Treading an uneasy communion between the individual and nationhood, Lillian engages in an auto theoretical exorcism of a country's ghosts with writing, gesture, and lyrical vocalisation.
She tells:
A story about an insomniac getting to work during a snowstorm
A story about a family moving a barn
A story about a pair of mitts covered in telephone numbers written in blue ballpoint pen.
Fluctuating between humour and horror, the everyday and the surreal, Lillian presses on the spurious edges of the white-settler, an illegitimate identity forged in colonial violence. Canada, the bastard child of the British Empire, convenient look-alike for American shooting crews, and site of world-ending imperialism perpetrated against Indigenous people, what does it mean, if anything, to be from a place like this? And what does it mean to be accountable for it?
Double-Sided Painting of Country and Kitchen Sink looks at the stories which survive and even thrive in the oral traditions of a colonial shadowland.
The first work in the trilogy, Halifax 1749 was first performed at Civic House in 2025 as part of the launch event for Going Goes By, a book initiated by graphic designer Daryl Schiltknecht and visual artist Wassili Widmer. It was then further developed with the support of Al Seed and presented during Buzzcut Double Thrills in April 2025 at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow.
The second work in the trilogy, A pair of mitts covered in telephone numbers written in blue ballpoint pen was presented as a work in progress at the launch of the 16th edition of TALKER by Giles Bailey at David Dale Gallery, Glasgow.
The third installment is currently under construction.
Hacks are currently providing creative support to Double-Sided Painting of Country and Kitchen Sink, helping Lillian to find new development opportunities to develop the next work in the trilogy.
Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about this project.