GLASGOW.- Manchester-based artist Jo McGonigal presents Blanco, a solo exhibition of new work developed during a summer residency in the gallery. Taking its title from white marble dust used in the traditional making of gesso (the foundation or ‘ground’ for painting), McGonigal brings painting into dialogue with landscape through her attention to deep material histories. Here, gesso is painted directly onto the walls of the gallery before introducing hand-drawn lines in coloured chalk, geometric structures, soft ground pigment, textile and found elements into formal abstract compositions. Materials and processes – human, mineral, animal are drawn together forming intimate connections between divergent materials on the verge of collapsing, crumbling, or breaking apart, their fragility undermined by the materials used. Here, landscape is experienced as a physical and spatial interaction that activates the body as much as the eye, whilst drawing on historical landscape painting and post-minimalist abstraction.
Knots feature strongly in McGonigal’s work suggesting scribbles, entanglements and binds, opening up a dynamism and playfulness. Much of this work takes place in the border areas, where order and structure is confronted with disorder, (wild, organic, phenomenal). These spaces of friction, between the real and imagined, inorganic and the organic, between figure and ground, the artificial and the natural, are used to connect everyday domestic and intimate human activity with the deep time of the earth. McGonigal combines these elements to enable a visual and sensory engagement with the energy of painting, exploring its tactile, spatial, durational and imaginative capacities.
A new series of works on paper will be exhibited for the first time. These works evoke perceptions of surface and depth with emphatic bold lines and dynamic textured backgrounds hinting at conceptions of grids and horizon lines. Each serve as the foundation for the spatial compositions.
Blanco is McGonigal's third solo exhibition at Patricia Fleming Gallery. Jo McGonigal lives and works in Manchester, UK. She is a Lecturer in Fine Art in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, Leeds. Her practice has gained significant recognition, with a number of important mid-career exhibitions and a series of ambitious larger-scale projects.
This year she has an upcoming two-person show for the 40th year anniversary of Castlefield Gallery Manchester with Frank Bowling OBE and new writing by Griselda Pollock. Recent solo exhibitions include: Pale Ground, 2023, Robinwood Mill, Todmorden, with accompanying text by Tim Ingold. Blinder, 2020 Patricia Fleming Gallery, Glasgow; Act Seven: Paler, Blinder, 2018 University of Leeds, School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies (Final PhD by practice exhibition); Shift, 2016, Patricia Fleming Gallery, Glasgow; Between Painting & Place, 2015 Platform A Gallery, Middlesbrough. Group exhibitions include: Vernacular with Working.Spaces at The Minories, Colchester for SLUICE EXPO 2024; Yellow, Gloam Gallery, Sheffield; Eccentric Geometric at Arthouse1, London; Raumx Projects, London (with Mary Maclean); International Biennial of Non-Objective Art, Lyon, France; After An Act, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast; From A to C; This Being B, Caustic Coastal, Salford; Real Painting at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester Marmite Painting Prize - Block336 Gallery (finalist), London & Highlands Gallery, Ireland; Chiara Williams Solo Award (finalist), Cello Factory, London.
In 2020 she joined Outside Architecture, an artist-led collaborative group based in London, participating in exhibitions and events internationally. She was shortlisted for the prestigious Tate Northwest Prize in 2020; for the British Art Show 2020 and nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Award in 2017 and 2018.
