Darkness Visible

27 Mar-13 Apr 2025

Overview

An exhibition of painting, installation, film and performance that takes the simple idea of light emanating from darkness as a starting point to explore deeper themes of the unseen, the psyche, memory, otherness, loss, love, and the space between us.

Darkness Visible was first proposed by the late artist, lecturer and former Chair of Contemporary British Painting Judith Tucker. Exhibiting artists explore the potential of light and dark in painting, installation and film to examine wider social and philosophical concepts.

In the gallery entrance a mirrored installation by Davis & Hibbs bounces a fragmented version of us back to ourselves. This work will be activated through live performance and music at the closing event. In 2023 John Moores Painting Prize winner Graham Crowley’s work, an acid yellow light floods into the shadows of an empty workshop. Casper White, Natalie Dowse, Donna Mclean and Geraldine Swayne hold momentarily still in paint the movie and Tik Tok images we consume on illuminated screens. In Tucker’s own painting a ghostly photograph from the artist’s disrupted heritage is viewed through a diasporic lens. Anne-Marie Creamer’s film ‘Dear Friend, I Can No Longer Hear Your Voice’, commissioned by the Sir John Soane Museum, narrating the haunting, shadowed presence of a lost love, will have a dedicated showing followed by an artist Q & A.

Marius von Brasch
Lesley Bunch
Anne-Marie Creamer
Graham Crowley 
Rosalind Davis
Justin Hibbs
Sam Douglas
Natalie Dowse
Pippa Gatty
Paula MacArthur
Gavin Maughfling
Donna Mclean
Ruth Murray
Joe Packer
Hideatsu Shiba
Geraldine Swayne
Judith Tucker
Casper White
Joanna Whittle