Small Mercies (2025) is the first solo show in England by Glasgow-based artist Matthew Arthur Williams. Spanning both galleries at Primary, the exhibition combines new printed media, sound and moving image.
In Gallery 1, textiles dyed with hibiscus dangle over windows, and black and white and colour darkroom prints resting on top of plinths take centre stage.
Permeating within Gallery 2 is an evolving and ‘trickling’ installation of moving image from Williams and others. Featuring the debut of a major new 16 mm film, Another Allegory (2025), he softly expands from his prior works, An Impossible Allegory (2019) and Soon Come (2022), to poetically bring together complex landscapes charged with labour, love and abandonment. This landscape is amplified in the film through the score Williams co-produced with violinist Blaize Henry, responding to the devastating archive of Julius Eastman.
These throughlines slowly weave with Williams’ long-time reflection on the extractive British post-industrial landscape. Small Mercies is not a love story but an intimate and entangled narration of material histories and presence that ‘speaks with its chest’.
Small Mercies is supported by the Elephant Trust.