"Lesley Halliwell was the discovery of the exhibition for me, all the more impressive for contributing two projects of very different character and scale. First was a set of bank envelopes, used as the ground for Owen Jones-ish drawings of Islamic tile patterns rendered in ballpoint and Tipp-Ex. That may sound banal, and it sort of is, but that’s also sort of the point. The remnants of junk mail culture are left intact, imparting an air of vague threat.... These little works on paper suggest a valiant, obsessive struggle to find beauty in the lest promising of circumstances.

That struggle is brilliantly realised in Halliwell’s other contribution a radiant drawing rendered with a child’s [drawing] toy. Enormous in scale, vibrant in colour and immaculate in execution, it hangs triumphant in the centre of the Pumphouse Gallery’s only double-height space. Suddenly, an otherwise tidy and reasonable exhibition seems to pinwheel crazily around you. Halliwell reminds us that mathematics has not just given us ways of understanding pattern, repetition and measurement, but also the concept of the infinite."

Glenn Adamson, exhibition review, Beauty is the First Test, Pumphouse Gallery, London, curated by Liz Cooper.

Crafts: The Magazine for Contemporary Craft Nov/Dec 2012 pp52-54.