Tricia Gillman LG at Benjamin Rhodes Gallery, Shoreditch. Opening 10 July
SUMMER READINGS: Tricia Gillman + Michael Ginsborg + Vik Winter
Benjamin Rhodes Gallery
62 Old Nichol St
London
E2 7HP
10 Jul-21 Sep 2024.
PV 10 Jul 2024 6-8.30pm
The solo exhibition “Moment Fields” at Benjamin Rhodes 2023, clarified for me a growing interest in the relationship between events mapped out, in real time, on the bare, vulnerable surface of cotton duck, and the awareness of the need to make reference to intimations of ‘that which lies beneath’. Consciousness inevitably gathers together the now and the then. The word ‘veiled’ began to echo as a metaphor for both explicit and implicit obscuration, the hiding and revealing (both conscious and unconscious,) of layers of awareness and understanding. The need was to find ways of exploring how our perception is often clouded, veiled, obscured by what we think we see on the surface, which can often prevent us seeing what is in reality before us.
I became interested in finding ways to move from the surface ‘skin’ of the canvas, through and into an internal space, as though peeling back the layers of the onion to reveal the life beneath the surface. The materials, process and structural shifts are driven by content-hence the multiple layers, the use of see-through muslin, the revealing of the usually hidden stretcher bars, along with the just visible words and markings below.
In addition to these ‘layers beneath’, more layers have been appearing above, in the form of a build-up of collaged elements, like snatches of experiential awareness or discrete inter-linked moments. The aim is to focus our attention on the opposition between surface/beneath, above/below, external/internal; contrasting the physicality and tactility of the surface with the slippery and ephemeral glimpses below.
Through these material and structural shifts, I am seeking to make the invisible visible, to find ways of mapping the layers and disruptions inherent in our often unclear, constantly changing, relationship with reality.
Tricia Gillman, June 2024
www.triciagillman.co.uk
