Nell takes joy “very seriously”. The mono-monikered, Sydney-based artist imbues her DIY-style, rock’n’roll-infused, graphically savvy work – encompassing painting, sculpture, installation and performance – with inimitable joie de vivre.

In the course of her career of 20-plus years, she has developed an iconographic language that reads as part pop-culture lexicon, part semiotics lesson: cartoon-style ghosts, lightning bolts, smiley faces and scallop shells (a symbol of rebirth as much as gourmet good times) populate her polymorphous universe.