The Cholmondeley Ladies

Caragh Thuring produces a wide variety of compositions through an economy of reoccurring elements – such as volcanoes, pyramids, bricks, and tartan patterns. The canvas for her paintings is commonly woven from jpegs of her own photographs or previous paintings, thus confusing perceptions of background and foreground, manmade and industrial. Fleet (2019) is a series of paintings that exemplify this modusoperandi. It consists of seven works bearing the exact same dimensions and, seemingly, the exact same composition. Over a woven background of bricks, Thuring has painted a submarine, each time anew. Even if her desire was to keep the vessels as alike as possible, nuances of variation are inevitable due to their manufactured nature. In a series of monotypes made earlier this year, the artist explores notions of twinning by making an ally out of the printing process. Thuring produced around 300 monotypes within this series, using the same plate without cleaning it after each print. This meant traces of the previous composition were always present in the next, as an accumulation of gestures. The fact that they are exhibited in the same order that they were conceived establishes a sense of narrative.

Cătălin Marius Petrișor Hereșanu is inspired by the outdoors to create his works – and weather permitting, often composes the works en plein air. Throughout the pandemic, the artist has produced a large number of pieces featuring birds, always flying over bright skies made of various shades of blue. Unlike Thuring’s Fleet paintings, there isn’t a desire to re-enact a composition over and over, but rather to explore new ways of composing by reshuffling same elements. Even the orientation of his canvasses vary between horizontal and vertical. At times the flock of birds seem to be performing a choreograph, as synchronised sky swimmers; at others, each of the animals appear in a unique pose, emulating Eadweard Muybridge’s famous horse photographs. On that note, all of his bird compositions are imagined, rather than reproduced from a  photograph.

Karoliina Hellberg works on show, though essentially individual pieces, communicate through the repetition of hues and signs. A small, compelling sunset drawing made predominantly with shades of blue, dialogues with another delicate watercolour that depicts fluffy clouds through a similar palette. Two spring-like landscapes showcase bucolic views, their differences somehow camouflaged by the use of identical colours. This twinning exercise is perhaps less evident, though certainly more magnanimous, between the works Snake Vase and Snakes Come Out In The Rain (both 2021). If in the first painting the serpent takes central stage, – albeit depicted as a functional object rather than a living entity – in the second, large-scale composition, the animal appears in a pit on the bottom left corner, as supporting acts of an outdoors scape. Both works convey Hellberg’s signature fantastic-realist style where, as of Thuring’s modus operandi yet through a different, Matisse-like approach, she blends notions of foreground and background. The artist further exhibits bronze casts of oysters throughout the gallery space. These are displayed in pairs, mimicking the way that shellfish exist in nature.