The Ten Commandments

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

Ten ancient rules. One very human story.

The Ten Commandments are probably among the most recognised moral rules ever written.

Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.

We know the words.

But, as always, I was more interested in what happens when you put the words aside and start looking at the human behaviour behind them.

Because thousands of years after these commandments were written, we are still killing, stealing, lying, coveting, betraying and worshipping all manner of things.

Human nature hasn't exactly moved on.

That was what interested me.

I didn't want to simply illustrate Moses holding two tablets of stone. I wanted to take these ancient laws and pull them into a contemporary narrative — looking at temptation, morality, hypocrisy, consequence and the wonderfully complicated ways human beings justify what they do.

Religion may have given me the framework, but people gave me the subject.

As with much of my biblical work, you don't have to believe in God to enter the story. The questions contained within it are human ones.

What do we worship?

What do we want?

What are we prepared to do to get it?

And what happens when the rules we expect others to live by become inconvenient when applied to ourselves?

Welcome to The Ten Commandments.

Don't just look at the art. Read it.

Completed Ten Commandments narrative painting by Julia O’Sullivan, with ten scenes built into Mount Sinai beneath a swirling biblical sky. Moses sits at the entrance beside the burning bush and Ark, while the Twelve Tribes of Israel and exploited souls appear beneath the mountain.

The Ten Commandments — The House Within Mount Sinai

This is the completed piece.
I built the home of the Ten Commandments into Mount Sinai itself, with the mountain becoming almost architectural — a house that we are about to enter. Above it, the sky twists and churns with that wonderful biblical sense that something much greater than us is happening.
At the entrance sits Moses, beside the burning bush and seated upon the Ark. Around his neck hang the tablets bearing the numbers of the Ten Commandments in Hebrew.
But my Moses has a very personal connection.
He is my late Uncle Billy.
Billy had a middle name beginning with M, but during his time in the Army he would never tell the other men what the M stood for. So naturally, they decided it stood for Moses and called him that instead. Years later, when I needed a Moses for this painting, there really was only one man for the job.
From Moses, the steps lead upwards and into the house, where each of the Ten Commandments has its own room and its own contemporary story.
But beneath all of this is the darker foundation of the painting.
Below the steps are the Twelve Tribes of Israel, alongside the souls of those who have been exploited. Their blood feeds upwards into the darkness surrounding the Commandments. For me, money is one of the great driving forces behind our willingness to break them — greed, power, possession and the exploitation of other people all becoming tangled together beneath the apparently simple rules above.
So the journey begins at the bottom.
We pass the consequences, meet Moses at the entrance, and then climb the stairs into the house to discover what has become of the Ten Commandments in the modern world.

Detail of Commandment I in Julia O’Sullivan’s Ten Commandments painting, depicting a satirical Scientology scene with a white-robed preacher wearing a tin-foil hat and antenna, surrounded by followers inside a padded-cell-like room.

I — Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me

For the First Commandment, I chose Scientology.
I wanted this room to question what happens when human beings surrender their judgement to something they have been persuaded to believe in. Throughout my work I keep returning to the same thought: the world is actually quite nuts. We create systems, twist ideas, manipulate truths and then somehow convince other people to follow along with us.
Here, I pushed that idea into the absurd.
The preacher stands at the centre wearing a tin-foil hat and antenna, addressing his followers from what is essentially a padded cell. Around him, they sit listening, their minds seemingly handed over to the belief being preached to them. On the cell door is the name Scientology.
The imagery is deliberately uncomfortable and satirical. I wasn't interested in painting conventional religious worship. I wanted to look at the vulnerability that can exist within belief itself — particularly when somebody discovers that belief can also be used as a means of influence, power and control.
For me, that is where this Commandment becomes interesting.
Perhaps the false god isn't always the thing being worshipped.
Sometimes it is the person who convinces you to worship it.

Detail of Commandment II from Julia O’Sullivan’s Ten Commandments painting, exploring false idols through celebrity worship, with a devoted fan worshipping pop star Lady Gaga as a modern-day idol.

II — Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thee Any Graven Image

For the Second Commandment, I turned to the modern idol.
Here, someone is quite literally worshipping a pop star — and Lady Gaga makes another appearance in my work.
I have always been fascinated by the intensity of celebrity worship. Gaga's relationship with her Little Monsters particularly interested me: people don't simply enjoy the music; for some, the artist becomes part of their identity. They follow, defend, imitate and sometimes seem to live and breathe the person they admire.
I find that extraordinary.
But this room isn't really about Gaga. She represents something much bigger about human nature.
We have always created idols. What has changed is the scale. Social media can now place a celebrity, influencer or complete stranger at the centre of millions of people's attention every single day. I look at the enormous followings surrounding people such as the Kardashians and genuinely ask myself:
Why?
Nobody, to me, is that interesting.
And perhaps that is why I see the Commandments less as a list of instructions and more as warnings about ourselves. Don't surrender your judgement. Don't become so consumed by another person that you stop thinking for yourself. Don't hand somebody a pedestal simply because millions of other people have already put them there.
Thousands of years later, we may no longer be kneeling before golden statues.
We have just found different idols.

Detail of Commandment III from Julia O’Sullivan’s Ten Commandments painting, showing children playing Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses beneath a suspended bomb marked “God’s Name”, representing innocent lives caught in religious war and violence justified through faith.

III — Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of the Lord Thy God in Vain

For the Third Commandment, I wanted to look at what happens when God's name becomes justification for something entirely human.
Children play Ring-a-Ring o' Roses around a bomb suspended above them. Written down its side are the words GOD'S NAME. The children are innocent; they have no part in the ideology, hatred or struggle for power taking place around them, yet they are the ones standing beneath the bomb.
This is my interpretation of religious war.
Throughout history, people have invoked God to justify violence, conquest and atrocities, convincing themselves that they are fighting some righteous cause or embarking upon a crusade to save humanity.
But whose ambition is really being served?
Too often, behind the grand language of religion or righteousness, there is something much more recognisably human: power, territory, control, revenge and the ambitions of those who want others to follow them.
And it is the innocent who pay for it.
That is why I see this Commandment as another warning about our lower human selves. Taking God's name in vain isn't only about saying a forbidden word. For me, there can be a far greater misuse of God's name:
putting it on the side of the bomb.

Detail of Commandment IV from Julia O’Sullivan’s Ten Commandments painting, showing a family walking endlessly inside a giant work wheel while a wealthy man rests beside a fire. Graves beside the wheel symbolise lives consumed by labour without rest.

IV — Remember the Sabbath Day, to Keep It Holy

For the Fourth Commandment, I took the idea of the Sabbath as a day of rest and imagined a world in which rest has effectively been taken away.
A mother, father and child walk endlessly inside a huge working wheel. Seven days and seven nights, round and round they go, providing the power that keeps somebody else's world running. Beside the wheel are their graves. There is only one way their labour ends.
Meanwhile, the fat cat sits comfortably in his armchair, drink in hand, enjoying the warmth of his fire while other people exhaust themselves to maintain his comfort.
For me, this Commandment became much bigger than simply keeping Sunday holy. It became about something incredibly basic that we seem to have forgotten: human beings need rest.
We need time to stop. Time with the people we love. Time in which our value isn't measured by how much we produce or how much money we can make for somebody else.
Yet greed and corruption have created systems where those with the least can work themselves into the ground while those with the most enjoy the luxury of stopping.
Again, I saw the Commandment as a warning.
What is the point of spending your entire life working to provide a better life if, in doing so, you never actually have the time to live it?

Detail of Commandment V from Julia O’Sullivan’s Ten Commandments painting, showing a well-dressed son brushing his elderly mother’s hair while she looks at a landscape picture, with his wheelchair-bound father behind her. Both parents are confined inside a locked cell, questioning society’s treatment of older people and the meaning of honouring one’s parents.

V — Honour Thy Father and Thy Mother

For the Fifth Commandment, I looked at what honouring your mother and father might actually mean when they become old, vulnerable and dependent upon us.
Here, a rather jumped-up toff dutifully brushes his dishevelled mother's hair. She stares towards a picture of beautiful scenery — an image of a world she can no longer reach. Behind her, his father sits in a wheelchair.
Both parents are inside a locked cell.
The son can tell himself that they are safe, fed and cared for. He visits. He brushes his mother's hair. He has done his duty.
But has he?
This piece came from my own experience of working as a carer and my unease about the way society deals with old age. There are circumstances where residential care becomes necessary, and there are undoubtedly families and carers doing everything they possibly can. This isn't a judgement on every family or every care home.
It is a challenge to the ease with which responsibility can sometimes be handed over and then justified.
Care itself has also become an industry. When vulnerable people are reduced to numbers, staffing levels and profit margins, something profoundly human can disappear. Underpaid and overstretched carers can be expected to provide excellent care within systems that give them neither enough time nor enough people to provide it.
For me, “Honour thy father and thy mother” is a warning not to forget their humanity when caring for them becomes inconvenient.
These are the people who once fed us, washed us, protected us and gave up parts of their own lives for ours. Growing old should not automatically mean being removed from life and placed somewhere out of sight.
The comfortable son brushing his mother's hair is therefore deliberately contradictory.
He looks as though he is caring for her.
But he is also holding the key to the cell.

Detail of Commandment VI from Julia O’Sullivan’s Ten Commandments painting, showing a young Girl Scout selling cookies at the doorway of a predatory killer who conceals a machete behind his back, with images of previous victims visible inside the darkened room.

VI — Thou Shalt Not Kill

For the Sixth Commandment, I didn't want to show the aftermath of murder. I wanted to show the moment before it happens.
A young Girl Scout stands innocently at the door, selling cookies. She has absolutely no idea who is standing on the other side.
The man opening the door already has a machete hidden behind his back.
Behind him are the faces of previous victims — photographs and reminders that tell us this isn't an impulsive act. He has done this before. The girl at the door isn't simply in danger; she has unknowingly stepped into the world of someone who desires to kill.
It is deliberately uncomfortable.
In fact, I wanted all ten rooms to be uncomfortable because that is how I came to understand the Commandments while making this piece. We tend to encounter them as neat little sentences learned in childhood:
Thou shalt not kill.
Well, obviously.
But why did somebody feel the need to write it down in the first place?
Because human beings kill.
We plan it. We justify it. We desire it. And sometimes there isn't even a grand excuse of war, religion, revenge or survival behind it. Sometimes one human being simply wants to take the life of another.
That is the darkness I wanted inside this room.
For me, the Commandments aren't descriptions of how good human beings are. They are warnings about what human beings are capable of becoming.
And perhaps that is why, thousands of years later, they remain so horribly relevant.

Detail of Commandment VII from Julia O’Sullivan’s Ten Commandments painting, showing a married couple with their respective lovers and scenes of infidelity behind them. Wilted flowers between the couple form a crack that travels into a stained-glass window containing their children, representing the wider consequences of adultery.

VII — Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery

For the Seventh Commandment, the adultery itself isn't really the most important part of the picture.
At the centre stands the supposedly happy married couple, still presenting the image of a marriage while each has another lover standing beside them. Behind them, shadowy figures on the walls reveal the infidelity that has been taking place out of sight.
The flowers between the husband and wife have wilted. Whatever once grew between them is dying.
But look at where the damage travels.
A crack begins at those dead flowers and runs upwards, splitting the stained-glass window behind them. Inside that window are their children.
They are the real victims in this room.
For me, that was the darker meaning of this Commandment. Adultery isn't confined to two adults deciding to have sex with somebody else. Decisions have consequences, and those consequences can travel straight through a family.
The husband and wife may justify their behaviour to themselves. They may blame one another. They may decide they deserve happiness elsewhere.
The children didn't make any of those choices.
That is why I physically carried the crack from the dying marriage into the window containing the next generation. What fractures between two people can fracture the world their children thought was secure.
Again, I saw the Commandment as a warning rather than simply a rule.
Before satisfying what you want in the moment, look at who might be standing in the path of the consequences.

Detail of Commandment VIII from Julia O’Sullivan’s Ten Commandments painting, depicting children imprisoned in a cage while adults exchange money outside, representing human trafficking and the stealing and exploitation of human lives.

VIII — Thou Shalt Not Steal

For the Eighth Commandment, I went back to an older and much darker meaning of “Thou shalt not steal” — the stealing of people.
So this room is about human trafficking.
Children are imprisoned inside a cage. They are frightened, vulnerable and completely powerless. Outside, money changes hands as they are effectively sold to predators.
It is meant to be deeply uncomfortable.
We usually hear “Thou shalt not steal” and think of possessions — don't take somebody's money, don't steal their car, don't take something that doesn't belong to you.
But there is something infinitely worse that can be stolen.
A human life.
People are still trafficked. Children are still abducted, exploited, abused and treated as commodities. Once again, money sits behind the transaction: another human being becomes something that can be bought, sold and used for somebody else's benefit.
Throughout this painting I kept finding that the Commandments weren't quaint old religious rules at all. Strip away the biblical language and you repeatedly arrive at warnings about the darkest parts of human behaviour.
And perhaps nowhere is that more obvious than here.
You can return a stolen possession.
You cannot return a stolen childhood.

Detail of Commandment IX from Julia O’Sullivan’s Ten Commandments painting, showing an editor surrounded by newspapers charting a false rape accusation, public condemnation, the accused man’s suicide and the later admission that the allegation was a lie, exploring the destructive consequences of false testimony.

IX — Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness

For the Ninth Commandment, I wanted to explore the power of a lie once other people believe it.
A newspaper reports that a man is a rapist. The accusation becomes the story and the story becomes the truth in the eyes of everyone reading it.
The newspapers scattered through the room form a timeline. First comes the accusation. Then the public condemnation. The man is labelled, judged and ostracised until eventually he takes his own life.
Only afterwards does the final headline appear.
The woman admits that she lied.
But by then it is too late.
For me, this Commandment is about far more than simply telling the truth. It is about understanding the extraordinary power our words can have over another human being.
Once an accusation has been released into the world, we don't necessarily control what happens to it. Other people repeat it. Newspapers print it. People judge. Reputations can be destroyed and lives changed forever.
And sometimes the truth arrives after the damage has already been done.
Throughout this painting I have treated the Commandments as warnings about human behaviour, and this may be one of the simplest of them:
Words have consequences.
False testimony doesn't need a knife or a gun to destroy somebody.
Sometimes a lie is enough.

X — Thou Shalt Not Covet

For the final Commandment, I turned the accusation back towards the Church itself.
At the centre sits the Pope on a golden chair, surrounded by expensive religious objects and the accumulated wealth and grandeur of the institution. At his feet, a poor woman kneels and kisses his ring.
The contrast is deliberate.
Here is a religion built upon teachings that include humility, charity and concern for the poor, yet surrounded by extraordinary wealth.
Even the Church covets.
Of course, institutions can justify wealth. They can call it heritage, tradition, preservation, symbolism or devotion. But for me, this panel asks a much simpler question: when does reverence become possession, and when does spiritual authority become earthly power?
That contradiction fascinates me.
Throughout the Ten Commandments I kept returning to the way human beings can manipulate almost anything to suit themselves. We can take an idea intended to guide our behaviour and find a way around it. We can condemn greed while accumulating wealth, preach humility while sitting on a throne, and speak for God while enjoying very human status and power.
And once again, it is people who create that contradiction.
That is really where this final room brings the whole painting back to its beginning. For me, the Ten Commandments aren't simply about religion. They are warnings about human nature — greed, power, desire, manipulation and our extraordinary ability to justify our own behaviour.
We can wrap it beautifully. We can call it tradition. We can even do it in the name of God.
But a golden chair is still a golden chair.

TO BE HUMAN IS UNCOMFORTABLE

A lot of my work turns things on their heads.

I don't particularly want people to stand in front of my paintings, decide they are beautiful and walk away. I want to make them uncomfortable.

Not uncomfortable with me.

Uncomfortable with themselves.

I want people to question their own humanity, because that is what I believe many of these ancient writings were asking us to do in the first place.

Don't simply act upon the most primitive parts of yourself.

The greed. The lust. The envy. The anger. The desire for power, possession, revenge or control.

Recognise it. Question it. Rise above it.

Become better.

Evolve.

That is how I came to understand the Ten Commandments while creating this piece. Not simply as ten instructions handed down by God, but as ten warnings about behaviours human beings are perfectly capable of.

And thousands of years later, we are still doing them.

Over centuries, some of these teachings have been manipulated, softened, selectively interpreted or reduced to familiar phrases that are very easy to disregard. Once you strip away the religious language, however, I think there is still something incredibly powerful underneath.

I am agnostic. I don't need to believe that these words came directly from God to appreciate the wisdom I find within them.

For me, they ask something much more interesting:

What kind of human being are you going to be?

Because being human is uncomfortable.

We have selfish thoughts. Cruel thoughts. Jealous thoughts. We want things we shouldn't want. We hurt people. We justify ourselves. We convince ourselves that our behaviour is different because our circumstances are different.

Perhaps that is precisely why these warnings have survived for so long.

I believe our tendency towards being self-serving is one of humanity's greatest problems, and it runs through much of my work. It is why I keep returning to subjects like sin, morality, punishment, temptation and consequence.

I'm not painting them because I think I have the answers.

I'm painting them because I think we should be asking the questions.

We are supposed to recognise the worst parts of ourselves, learn from them and become something better.

The uncomfortable question is:

Do we?

DON'T JUST LOOK AT THE ART. READ IT.

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The Ten Commandments