Caragh Thuring

PRESS RELEASE

Caragh Thuring

27 April – 1 June 2018

Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to present a series of new works by London-based Caragh Thuring. Her second exhibition at the gallery comprises seven paintings, each identical in scale and set against a backdrop of painted tartan.

This series follows a recent collaboration between Thuring and traditional silk weavers in Suffolk, England, for which the artist painted onto the surface of woven fabric she had commissioned. For this series, Thuring has painted tartan patterns directly onto her characteristic unprimed linen, lending structure to each image and anchoring the body as a whole, connecting the otherwise-unrelated objects of the paintings’ foregrounds. For Deep Screw, the artist has used both techniques: the canvas is made of a woven brick pattern - a reuse of an earlier painting - which forms the painting’s background as Thuring paints the completed tartan overtop.

Layering of imagery and incongruity of scale heighten the dreamlike nature of the pictures. The seemingly-disparate subjects exist in a balance of abstraction and realism. Trees, silhouetted, blow in the breeze in Plant, while coins rain down onto a bent Rubens-esque figure in Bank Shot. Submarines, a handbag and volcanoes are displayed in perceived mid-motion and purposeful un-symmetry. The paintings’ titles feature playful references to the game of snooker without diverging entirely from their images.

Caragh Thuring was born in 1972. She lives and works in London. Thuring received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1995 from Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK. Thuring’s solo exhibitions include Thomas Dane Gallery, London, The Chisenhale Gallery, London, and Simon Preston Gallery, New York.  Her work is included in many public and private collections, among them the Tate, Arts Council Collection, Government Art Collection and The Zabludowicz Collection.