For Awled, Debono melds realism with abstraction in her images of deteriorating fragments which float above or oscillate around the recurring motif of an aperture. The title is an extension on the word “awl,” an instrument for piercing holes, referenced by Debono’s apertures which puncture the picture plane to expose submerged images. 

These paintings reflect upon the condition of an image as it stands in relation to the visible world. For Debono, visible phenomena in the world seem to fluctuate between two poles: of latency and potency, silence and speech, illegibility and legibility, without ever touching and fusing with either extreme. For Awled the choice of imagery exemplifies this fluctuation: a shattered window pane, photos from a book or marks on a concrete footpath, all vying for precedence.

As the viewers eye navigates these compositions the artist pierces their reflections on what is significant in the world. Furthermore, the apertures, as a reference to the human eye, indicate that the audience is being provided a glimpse into the artists process of viewing, and the aesthetic potentiality of imagery she observes in her everyday environment – hence in turn the artists eye is also pierced. These paintings attempt to transmit an image of the world as a field of infinite regression of images behind images through which some spectral ‘real’ is evacuating.