moon iron wings
Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, 2026

moon iron wings is an exhibition of new work in still and moving image by Tāmaki Makaurau-born, Prishtina-based artist Lily Worrall, developed from her time in residence at the Rita Angus Cottage in the summer of 2025.

A poetic and personal meditation on the shifting nature of the self-image, moon iron wings collages place, sound and subject to consider the traces that histories leave behind. 

The title of the exhibition is drawn from Worrall’s newly-commissioned moving image work, shown in Enjoy’s screening room. Across layered sonic and temporal registers, moon iron wings parses a number of narrative reference points: the film set on which her parents first met, where they were tasked with making their own gravestones; the story of a girl named Lilly who stole flowers from the graves at Bolton Street Cemetery; and the artist’s observations of Te Whanganui-a-Tara and her new home in Prishtina, Kosovo. Set adrift from a clear start or end point, each orbits the shifting terrain of memory, both familial and historical. The near and distant past coalesce alongside the present, as slippages in time and place are brought together to an atmospheric and sensorial soundscape of rushing wind, chiming bells, and an uncanny composition for stringed instruments. In turn, Worrall’s own subjectivity is doubled, refracted and retold through the gaze and voices of those closest to her. Her self-portrait is examined only by proxy, made contingent on the perceptions of others and mediated by the camera.

In Gallery B, Worrall presents An image of my mother, 1982, 2026, a photograph of the artist’s mother lying on top of her fictional grave. The portrait defers the act of remembrance to become something more ambiguous; Worrall’s process of image-making is constituted as much by seekings and hauntings as it is by fixity.

- Jess Clifford