The Thüringer, 2021

Caragh Thuring

Caragh Thuring (b. 1972, Brussels, Belgium)

Thuring’s unique language relishes but undermines the inherent flatness of painting, destabilising the viewer into reassessing how they have been conditioned to look and see. Building and arranging imagery in opposition to traditional visual and logical hierarchies her fractured compositions of people and places interweave the present, past and future into a glimpsed experience that’s both technological and human.

Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2014

“...I began by painting volcanoes.... But the brick, for me, represents in one small object, the coming together of humans and earth. I’m intrigued by the simple perfection of that.”

For recent works, Thuring has commissioned bespoke cloth to use as her canvas. Digital renderings of previous paintings, photographs she has taken, and found images are woven on a loom, sewn together and stretched before being painted onto -“I want to build the work into the surface, to continue the work I’ve already begun.” In her series of window paintings, or ‘lateral portraits’ as the artist refers to them, window ledge displays reveal the self fashioning of the buildings’ unseen occupants.

Thuring is curious about what lies beyond, out of sight, or beneath the surface, be it man-made, a person, or a landscape. Volcanoes, their geological structures, and nuclear submarines both reoccur in her work and further emphasise the clash of the natural and the manufactured.

Thuring has recently completed a collaboration with 6a architects for Holborn House, London. This includes Great Things Lie Ahead, her artwork on the building's façade, using the location as a starting point to create visual and textural additions that implicate the entire space and the occupants as a part of the composition.

Solo exhibitions include:

Caragh Thuring, Luisa Strina Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil (2019); Builder, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago IL (2019); Caragh Thuring, Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples, Italy (2019)

Selected group exhibitions include:

Mixing it Up; Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London, England (2021); Vesuvio Quotidiano Vesuvio Universale, Museo di San Martino, Naples, Italy (2019); Slow Painting, England (2018/2019); Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by Her Writings, Tate St Ives, Cornwall, England.