The Storyteller: No 1.

‘Painting as a Foreign Language' was a group exhibition of twenty-three British artists, curated by Professor Gerard Hemsworth, which formed part of the 25th São Paulo Biennial, 2002. The aim of the exhibition was to highlight the resurgence of painting as a vital practice in the British art environment. Mullaniff contributed The Storyteller, a large-scale (18 foot) painting comprising seven wood and gesso panels inscribed with painted and drawn motifs.
For the form and content of The Storyteller, Mullaniff drew on her archival research into the home as a place laden with memory and cultural identity, reflected in domestic memorabilia and decorative artefacts. Mullaniff has explored these issues through paintings that encompass the use of printed fabric, photographic imagery and floral illustrations, reconfiguring past design motifs and their cultural connotations into a contemporary context. In The Storyteller, Mullaniff repeated and cropped a basic rose motif across the surface such that the colour appeared to fade where it was absorbed into the gesso surface. The motif was derived from Mullaniff's research into the book of prints, Les Roses, by Pierre-Joseph Redoute, a French artist of the late 18th/ early 19th century, complemented by investigations into the patterns used for textiles, wallpaper and lace ornamentation dating from 1830 to 1900.
A fully illustrated catalogue, Painting as a Foreign Language, published by Editora Cultural Inglesa [ISBN 8588116073], accompanied the exhibition, and included essays by Suhail Mallik and Gerard Hemsworth.
The exhibition was funded by the British Council, Goldsmiths College, Takano and Editora Cultural Inglesa.