LONDON.- Kate MacGarry presents Swan Song, Mark Corfield-Moore’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, featuring a new body of work that continues the artist’s experimentation at the intersection of painting, weaving and storytelling.
Centred on ideas of transience, transition and uncertainty, these works extend Corfield-Moore’s reinterpretation of traditional ikat weaving techniques, refined during his time in Thailand. Rather than resist-dyeing threads, the artist paints directly onto the unwoven fibres so that, when warp and weft meet, the image is already mid-transformation, fracturing and shifting into a glitchy visual disruption.
Drawing on the poetic potential of language, the phrases that feature in each work prompt states of partial understanding. These are filtered through the lens of Corfield-Moore’s experience as part of the Thai-British diaspora and its cultural and intergenerational differences. Interested in the spaces in between meaning, the artist creates an interplay between the image, text and title of each work. While the words and images may not immediately correlate for the viewer, they flesh out a very real and personal memory for the artist, inviting them into an implicit intimacy.
A series of smaller paintings extends Corfield-Moore’s visual language through thickly applied oil paint, creating a new tension between the image and the ground it sits on. Resembling embroidered embellishments, these impasto marks blur the boundaries between painting and weaving through looser, more abstract forms of mark-making that, like the woven works, resist a clean separation between surface and image.
The exhibition’s title takes its cue from the idiom for a final effort or performance given shortly before one’s death or retirement. In adopting this phrase, Corfield-Moore questions the temptation to view life as a linear crescendo, and instead draws attention to the everyday occurrence as a constant source of inspiration, translation and play.
“As with much of my practice, these new works draw from everyday experiences that are not exceptional or singular, but they hold the same significance – or insignificance – as human life itself. There is both familiarity and profundity in these quotidian moments and the encounters, departures and arrivals that shape them. Perhaps ironically, this exhibition is not about a final gesture – a singular swan song – but rather I see it as a playful celebration of these ordinary passings, which to me seem equally worthy of being recorded.”
Mark Corfield-Moore was born in 1988 in Bangkok, Thailand and currently lives and works in Hastings, UK. Describing himself as a painter that utilises textile techniques, in his practice Corfield-Moore reflects on his Thai and British heritage to investigate themes of transience and cultural memory. Eschewing and repurposing the ancient art of ikat, his distorted and glitchy imagery is a recollection and recreation of personal and collective histories.
Recent solo shows include We Speak Chicken, Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2024-25); We Speak Chicken, CCA Goldsmiths, London (2024); Cheetah Girl, Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne (2023); Other Follies and Picnics, Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona (2022) and Neither Here Nor There, Cob Gallery, London (2021). Group exhibitions include The Fold, Public Gallery, London (2026); An Alchemy of Elsewhere, Niru Ratnam, London (2025); The Equal Right to Live and Blossom, Kate MacGarry, London (2024); Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2023); Royal Academy of Art, London (2022); Swedish Institute, Paris (2022); Manchester Art Gallery (2020) and Jerwood Space, London (2019). Corfield-Moore graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2018.
