PRESS RELEASE

Caragh Thuring

23 May – 2 August 2024

Opening reception: Thursday, 23 May, 5 to 7 pm

Anthony Meier is pleased to present Caragh Thuring’s third exhibition at the gallery, showcasing the London-based artist’s exploration of Mount Tamalpais, the iconic Northern California peak in Marin County. On view from 23 May to 2 August 2024, the exhibition marks Thuring’s first-ever showcase of entirely small-scale works. The 18 paintings that comprise the show deepen the artist’s vibrant and layered investigation of the interplay between natural and human made worlds. For this new body of work, Thuring depicts the majestic Mount Tamalpais – studying it in books, sifting through source material and discovering its history from afar - without ever setting foot on its soil, five thousand miles away in London. 

Thuring is renowned for her spare and abstracted representations of industrial structures, boundary lines and the body’s recognition of the disjunctive or in-between. Previously working on large-scale canvases of untreated linen and bespoke woven cloth, her paintings reassemble motifs such as brickwork, volcanoes, pyramids and architecture. Here, Thuring integrates Mount Tamalpais into her lexicon.

Despite the mountain’s non-volcanic nature, the artist exploits a common misconception and presents it as such, serving her fascination with volcanic phenomena - a recurring and pervasive theme in her work. Symbolising mythological, perilous, and life-sustaining forces, volcanoes are silent yet ominous while dormant, spontaneously erupting with cataclysmic force, and ultimately yielding to a verdant renewal.

Mount Tamalpais previous but eroded history bears the scars of a cold war base, ‘the crookedest railroad in the world’ and other human traverses and alterations. Thuring paints various viewpoints, scales and perspectives of the mountain, concocting a recognisable yet complex yearning or romantic envisioning, reinforcing the clash between human intervention and landscape and their mutual battle for domination.

About the Artist

Caragh Thuring (b. 1972) lives and works in London, UK. Thuring received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1995 from Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK. Thuring has had domestic and international solo exhibitions at Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA; Thomas Dane Gallery, London, England and Naples Italy; Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, England; Luisa Strina Gallery, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago IL; Simon Preston Gallery, New York NY and Chisenhale Gallery, London, England.

Recent group exhibitions include: Intimacy rarely makes sense of things, Pond Society, Shanghai, China, 2024; Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, England, 2023; Hollow Earth: Art, Caves & The Subterranean Imaginary, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, England, 2023; Christen Sveaas Art Foundation: The Unseen, selected by Hurvin Anderson, Whitechapel Gallery, London, England, 2022; Christen Sveaas Art Foundation: The Travel Bureau, selected by Paulina Olowska, Whitechapel Gallery, London, England, 2022; The Stand Ins: Figurative painting from the Zabludowicz Collection, Zabludowicz Collection, London, England, 2022; Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London, England, 2021; Masterpieces in Miniature: The 2021 Model Art Gallery, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, England, 2021; Double-M, Double-X, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Ireland, 2020; JOKER, Jahn und Jahn, Munich, Germany, 2020; Slow Painting, Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, and Thurso Art Gallery, Inverness, Scotland, 2020; This Corrosion, Helmet Row Modern Art, London, England, 2020; Slow Painting, The Levinsky Gallery, Plymouth, England, 2020; Slow Painting, Leeds  Artrts Centre, Leicester, England (traveled to: The Levinsky Gallery, The Arts Institute – University of Plymouth; The Edge, University of Bath and Bath Spa School of Art and Design; Inverness Museum and Art Gallery; Thurso Art Gallery), 2019; Shadowed Forms, Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2018; Virginia Woolf, An exhibition inspired by her writings, Tate St Ives, St Ives, Cornwall (traveled to: Pallant House, Chichester, England; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England) 2018; and Mostra Inaugurale, Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples, Italy, 2019.

Commissions:

Great Things Lie Ahead, 2020, Holborn House, London, England with 6a Architects
Eruzione del 2020, Le Sirenuse, Positano, Italy

Public Collections:

Tate Gallery, London, England
Arts Council Collection, England
Government Art Collection, England
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo NY
Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, England