Pinkie Maclure: Lost Congregation

17 Jun-12 Aug 2023

Overview

Pinkie Maclure's debut solo exhibition

Working with intricate stained glass, ambisonic voices and moving image, Pinkie Maclure’s Lost Congregation transforms the gallery space into an eerie, abandoned chapel haunted by the echoes of its lost congregation.

Maclure uses a multitude of techniques, including engraving, painting and layering to create poignant, darkly humorous stained glass vignettes full of symbolism, which explore her personal demons as well as pressing issues such as climate change, insomnia and addiction.

Lost Congregation’s centrepiece installation “The Soil” is a collaboration with 3D sound scenographer John Wills. Made from 70% salvaged glass from a Victorian greenhouse which collapsed in a storm, the installation laments our disappearing countryside and its distracted, fragmented communities. Amidst this mourning, it also celebrates nature's remarkable ability to breathe life into forgotten places, with the aid of grassroots activism.

“My whole life had been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of God’s presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that lets you see your place in the big picture. And that is what I had with my first compost heap”.
- Bette Midler

Pinkie Maclure

Pinkie Maclure is an award-winning contemporary artist specialising in stained glass and song. She is intrigued by the cracked anarchy of medieval stained glass and the links it offers us between past and present. She has co-written ten albums of music with musician and sound designer John Wills.

Her work is in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland and recent exhibitions include Homo Faber (Venice), Collect (London), the Outsider Art Fair (New York) and the John Ruskin Prize (Manchester).

Pinkie has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Sequested Prize, John Byrne Prize, Zealous Craft Prize and Jerwood Makers.

Artists