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

 

 

 

 

BENJAMIN RHODES ARTS PRESS NOTICE

 

TRICIA GILLMAN

 

Moment Fields: 2019-2023

 

Paintings and Collage

9 February – 1 April 2023 (opens Wednesday 8 February 6 – 8pm, then Wed-Sat 12-6)

 

I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am untrue.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little. John Kabat Zinn

 

‘The aim is to record the moment-to-moment experience of thinking, sensing, feeling and remembering documenting

as directly as possible, our conscious awareness, as each present moment emerges, focuses

and melts away. The space of the painting becomes a mapping site, the raw canvas accrues evidence, like the

way a tablecloth, a sheet, or a wall collects stains, or the skin we live in rides its years. Materials chosen, are

“of the earth,” (charcoal, graphite, pastel,) elemental, like dust, pollen or sediment. While the works evolve,

through touch, scribble, dustings of pigment, words, images and erasures, they construct and deconstruct

themselves, mirroring the emergence and the dissolving of thoughts, feelings and sensations as they unfold

simultaneously within the mind and the container of the medium. The slow and generous act of looking

negotiates and shares this intimacy of consciousness…….

 

My quest in this series is for materials, structures and processes that might harness and embody moment-tomoment

consciousness, mapping movements of awareness as directly as I can perceive and process them.

Materials and processes are chosen to set up a kind butterfly net that scoops up the passing moment as

directly and openly as possible….

 

Thoughts and felt sense surrender to the moment, through response and adjustment they bear witness to

the continuum of the “now” and the lure of the half-formed, latent state…

 

This sense of open experiencing seems to me to be my request of myself and from the generosity of the

viewer. No hiding or dressing up. One thing leads to another, one thing obscures and another reveals…. a

time -based record of our being consciously here, now.’

 

Tricia Gillman 2021-2022.

 

The late Mel Gooding closed his 2011 essay for Gillman’s 30-yr Retrospective Stepping Stones:

‘Time and memory, space and sensation, what has been and what is here present; culture and nature; inner

world and outward reality: all contract, in a simultaneity of sensation and reflection, to the span of a single

canvas! Painting enacts the vertiginous reality of consciousness.’

 

Benjamin Rhodes Arts is very pleased to present new work from Tricia Gillman’s London studio,

recently featured in the John Moores Prize 2020, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020 & the Derwent

Art Prize 2022. This resumes our historic exhibiting partnership and follows Gillman’s participation in regular

solo and group shows across the UK.

 

62 Old Nichol Street, London E2 7HP @benjaminrhodes_art

 

benjamin@benjaminrhodes.co.uk 44 (0) 7768 398428

2021 PRESS RELEASE

John Moores Painting Prize release 'virtual tour' interactive video of 2021 exhibition

 

2021 PRESS RELEASE

Tricia Gillman's interview for

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize

 

2020 PRESS RELEASE

Tricia Gillman selected for

John Moores Painting Prize

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

February 2021 - June 2021

 

https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/jmpp/john-moores-painting-prize

Moments 1: Minds Eye

2019

Pencil, charcoal, pastel on unprimed cotton duck    

187 x 102 x 3cms

 

2020 PRESS RELEASE

Tricia Gillman selected for Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020.

Touring to:

Drawing Projects UK, Trowbridge, 2 - 31 October

Cooper Gallery, Dundee, 13 - 19 December 

Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, 9 - 22 January

TheGallery, Arts University Bournemouth, Spring  2021 (tbc)

 

http://trinitybuoywharfdrawingprize.drawingprojects.uk/index.php/news

Moments 3: Beneath The Skin

2019

Pencil, charcoal and pastel on unprimed cotton duck

180x86x3cms

2020 PRESS RELEASE

Tricia Gillman selected for Wales Contemporary

 

Each Moment 4

2018

Collage, acrylic & charcoal on canvas

100x125cms

 

2020 PRESS RELEASE

Tricia Gillman selected for A Personal Perspective, APT, London

 

https://www.aptstudios.org/future-exhibitions

Black Magic

1992

Oil on canvas

188x173cms

Liz May : A Personal Perspective
An exhibition of artworks chosen by Liz May to celebrate 18 years at APT : 2002 to 2020 
5 to 8 November 2020, open 12noon to 5pm

 

Peter Anderson  |  Charming Baker  |  Cuillin Bantock  |  Dominic Beattie  |  John Butterworth  |  Gill Capewell |  Eileen Cooper  RA  |  Tori Day  |  Bea Denton  |  Sarah Durham  |  Fred Gatley  |  Tricia Gillman  |  Oona Grimes  |  Clyde Hopkins  |  Kabir Hussain  |  Matthew Krishanu  |  Simon Leahy-Clark  |  Maggie Learmonth  |  Sara Lee  |  Wayne Lucas  |  Enzo Marra  |  Liz May  |  John McLean  |  Jane Millar  |  Lisa Milroy  RA  |  Barbara Nicholls  |  Jayne Parker  |  Kasper Pincis  |  Joanna Sands  |  Patrick Semple  |  Keir Smith  |  Chris Sowe  |  Christine Stark  |  David Theobald  |  Alaena Turner  |  Annie Turner  |  Claire Undy  |  Jacqueline Utley  |  Virginia Verran  |  Ben Woodeson  |  Maike Zimmermann

 

In recognition of Liz’s contribution, dedication and commitment, APT is pleased to present Liz May : A Personal Perspective. Comprised of artworks from previous exhibitors, as well as peers and friends, this exhibition presents a comprehensive showcase of paintings, photography, films and sculpture that have been etched into her mind and whose impact on the gallery she could not forget. A Personal Perspective marks the eighteen-year anniversary of Liz’s work at APT and pays homage to her outstanding direction and devotion to the arts since 2002. 

During Liz’s tenure as APT’s manager - director - organiser - project leader - curator - technician - accountant - boss - guv’nor - baker - decorator and cleaner, many professional relationships and friendships were formed, and APT gained recognition as not just a well-renowned studio group b­ut also a flagship gallery in South East London. With a reputation for showcasing cutting-edge contemporary artworks, artists and collectives, many returned time and time again. The remarkable space, light and dynamism that APT provides as a backdrop was second only to the kind, welcoming and expert guidance Liz provided.  Not to mention the cakes!

APT has served as a beacon of contemporary visual art in London for twenty-five years and after the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic are lifted it will continue to do so in perpetuity.  This exhibition shows the artworks that have shone the brightest for Liz over the past eighteen years and hopes to illuminate the path for the next twenty-five.

APT Gallery  |  6 Creekside  |  Deptford  |  London SE8 4SA
Registered Charity No 1045363
aptstudios.org

 

2016 PRESS RELEASE

Tricia Gillman Solo Exhibition

October 2016

 

Time Being 

Recent Work

 

 

Exhibition runs from

Wednesday-Sunday 26-30th October,

opening hours 2-6pm

 

The Cello Factory,

33-34 Cornwall Road,

Waterloo,

SE1 8TJ

 

 

An interest in the brain, neuroplasticity, wisdom traditions and training to re-wire neural pathways, underlies this work. The desire is to register unadorned, an open, primary experience of time and being. Using household recycling, studio debris, rudimentary drawing and collage, it aims to make present a quiet witnessing of ordinary consciousness. The provisional, piecemeal structures, intend to harness moment by moment unfolding of thought, sensation and feeling and to map awareness as it engages, dwells and passes on; a kind of negotiated looking which slows down and spotlights awareness as it flows. The mind's eye journey.


This attitude is orchestrated by time, chance and choice and the resulting by-product, is the work. These accumulated moments, linked bit by bit, (drawing notations, rubbings, collage, found surfaces, notes one's written to oneself, ) enact a direct transference of real, haphazard everyday things into this open-ended and non-hierarchical document. This might take the form of a map, a diary, a list, a dictionary, structured perhaps, as a stack, a scatter, a string: a sequence, piece by piece.  


The particularity of how something is made and structured, however basic, must concentrate one’s looking on just this bit now. A just is-ness. Each mark needs to have the “now” focus of a fly crawling across a window pane…and yet to question the possibilities, of being able to make connections between systems and meaning, to encounter the dilemmas of signs, through just being aware that we are here, and looking, in real time.

 

Tricia Gillman

August 2016

Print | Sitemap
© Tricia Gillman