Lily Bunney Celebrates Rebellious Female Friendships

A figure crouches between two vehicles in the evening dusk, her pale blue trousers rolled down to her knees, flip-flopped feet planted firmly on the ground. She doesn’t meet my gaze, yet I remain entranced by her silken blonde hair, which cascades down her shoulders towards the floor, curtaining a golden puddle so bright it becomes the primary light source in this urban snapshot. Aptly titled Girls Peeing on Cars #4 (She reminds me of the Eiffel Tower) (all works 2024), this watercolour pencil drawing is part of Lily Bunney’s debut exhibition, ‘girls peeing on cars’ – an ode to youthful irreverence. Part of a community of squatting women dressed in iconic noughties fashion, she is refreshingly devoid of shame as she urinates on an unknown road at night. The artist rejects any assumed vulgarity in the woman’s actions, instead choosing to revel in her unapologetic dismissal of prudishness; she is decisive and elegant in her movements, her body expertly contorting to lift her handbag above her torso, safely suspended away from the stream of urine.

Taking inspiration from her former vocation as a maths teacher, Bunney uses checkered notebook paper as the support for her large-scale pieces, which are built up from hundreds of small, pixel-like pencil dots. Incorporating shadows, reflections and varied textures, her hyper-realist, pointillist images are shaped by an intricate attention to detail. Careful pencil markings on the white paper surface highlight the precision required to create the artist’s captivating visual illusions. Whilst her complex grids of pigment sneak unexpected dots of neon green and bright orange into a predominantly dark colour palette, the integrity of the makeshift canvas itself is pushed to its limits: over time, the dense application of watercolour pencil has distorted the thin pages, creating ripples in their topography. Dotted landscapes begin to melt into one another. The drawings’ frailty reminds me of the impermanence of so many works traded in the commercial art world, without overshadowing the show's overall message of bold feminine solidarity.

The works in the show document the various stages of an evening spent with close friends: Bunney’s monumental depictions of urinating women are interspersed with a selection of small-scale, gem-bedazzled scenes of platonic love and girlhood. While the juxtaposition may seem jarring, it perfectly encapsulates the mercuriality of a girls’ night out, which might be fraught with drastic turns at any point. Particularly sentimental is the artist’s ‘Birthday Dinner’ series, which features friends holding hands in a busy restaurant: Birthday Dinner #2 (Disappearing into the affection bonds of the world around me) and Birthday Dinner #3 (With all of you I’m never lonely – It’s a miracle come true) create a sense of continuity through a recurring blue sleeve and dark setting. Bunney grants us a seat at the glittering table, an invitation into this loving community, without revealing her subjects’ identities – tapping into the universal fulfilment of female friendship. 

If ‘girls peeing on cars’ follows one wild night, the show’s biggest work, Girls Peeing on Cars #6 (I like to think they’re all peeing on the same BMW), is its parting call to female rebellion. As the only drawing of a woman urinating by a vehicle in daylight, seemingly relishing the quiet solitude of the early morning hours, it urges us to venture out of the darkness and embrace the uncensored, hedonistic parts of ourselves. Through overly poetic titles and a focus on the small details that make up a friendship, Bunney pens a love poem to the women in her life, in doing so reminding me how grateful I am for the wonderful, audacious women in my own.

Lily Bunney’s ‘girls peeing on cars’ is on view at Guts Gallery, London, until 19 November

^{Main image: Lily Bunney, Girls Peeing on Cars #6 (I like to think they're all peeing on the same BMW) (detail), 2024, watercolour pencil on paper mounted on curved plywood frame, 215 × 120 × 28 cm. Courtesy: the artist, miłosc and Guts Gallery; photograph: Vinx Photography}