A_Place Gallery

Opening

Kind of Golden Light (cover up), oil on board, 21x30cm, 2023

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Gallery Text

A_Place Gallery is delighted to present “OPENING”, a group exhibition at the launch of its new art space, featuring Neil Bickerton, Gwenan Davies, Sam Drake, Louise Evans, Giovanni Giacoia, Tess Glen, Maggie Hills, Jamie Limond, Graham Lister, Samuel O'Donnell, Jonathan Pinn, Richard Walker, Daisy Weir, Sarah Wilson and Amy Winstanley.

The exhibition title, “OPENING”, takes on multiple meanings given the context of the show. Quite plainly, an exhibition has an opening. But, as the inauguration of a new art space in the city centre of Glasgow, the gallery itself might also be taken as an opening move: a beginning, an entering in, an overture.

A_Place Gallery is located in Adelaide Place Baptist Church, a neoclassical building from 1877, which has recently completed renovation works. The gallery launch coincides with a fresh lease of life for the building and a new chapter in its history as part of a community committed to the life and well-being of the city for nearly 170 years. (The exhibition is also taking place as part of the Glasgow Doors Open Days festival, for which the theme is “a sensory city”).

The exhibition features 15 artists for whom painting is a significant aspect of their practice. Painting represents another opening of sorts, a visual doorway into the thoughts, lives, preoccupations and concerns of each individual painter; each painting a modestly-sized portal to worlds beyond themselves, even as they each speak as defined objects within the world.

15 September - 29 September

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@aplacegallery
209 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4HZ

A_Place is an art gallery with a programme focussed on showing contemporary painting from emerging and established artists based primarily in Scotland. A_Place is housed in the building of Adelaide Place Baptist Church.

In association with Nomas* Projects

I was invited to exhibit as part of the first exhibition at the new Glasgow Gallery, A_Place. The artist and curator Samuel O’Donnell, who established the galley, made studio visits, during which he identified small scale works that represented the breadth of contemporary painting practices.

I exhibited Kind of Golden Light (cover up), which is a small painting that continues my explorations of how surface textures and the application of paint can push and pull viewers, and generate an interesting viewing experience. In this instance, the abstract form of the work is derived from a mark made in a notebook, which scribbled over a pervious piece of information. As such, the translation of this shape was a repetition of a quick, unthinking, intuitive ‘covering-up’ or obscuring of information. The original mark, the initial piece of information is apparently there, but has been redacted, hidden and is no longer able to be unearthed.

The work highlights issues related to the legibility and alteration of information. It connects with surfaces and palimpsest, with ideas of graffiti and of overlaying information. Issues of erasure and of change are also touched on when I developed this way of working and it is part of ongoing investigations in the studio.