Lily Worrall’s Grains is a photographic project exploring zoomed-in, blown-up family images that are stretched beyond recognition. Worrall has long been interested in found materials, the family archive, and the limits of the image. By using 16mm and Super 8 film, Grains seeks to further investigate the graininess of analogue photography, the individual flecks and dots that make up the image.
Through these images, Worrall explores what it means to look near the subject – particularly loved ones, including her father, mother, brother, and partner – by zooming in on the objects, textures, and fragments surrounding them. Developing alongside her interest in amateur family photography, Grains examines alternative methods of portraiture that capture the subject beyond the body. This approach carries an inherent paranoia of an archival impulse, or in her own words, ‘the insistence on finding something more than the tableaux, the snake in the grass.’
About the Artist
Lily Worrall is a Tāmaki Makaurau-born, Prishtina-based artist and filmmaker who explores the texture and materiality of image-making through archival material, analogue and digital processes. Her work is presented in various formats, including site-specific installations, essay films, fiction and sound.
Since graduating from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2016, Worrall has exhibited at the Auckland Art Fair, RM Gallery and the Audio Foundation, was the recipient of the Rita Angus Summer Residency in 2025 and presented her solo exhibition moon iron wings at Enjoy Contemporary Art Space in 2026.