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
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.
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APT
Gallery | 6 Creekside | Deptford | London SE8 4SA |
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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
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