Room Tones

October 11 - October 29, 2022



installation view - front gallery



installation view - front gallery



installation view - front gallery


installation detail - front gallery



installation detail - front gallery


installation detail - front gallery


installation detail - front gallery


Can painting be sensate whilst also utterly restrained? For Kristy Gorman in her new exhibition Room Tones, it most certainly can. Four framed paintings in the back gallery comprise inks on muslin that has firstly been stretched over and then glued down onto board. Their titles are terms applied to cloth, Twill and Bias for example. Gorman allows the warp and weft of fine calico to offer movement, and a sense of texture to a ground that seemingly quivers beneath the painted forms.

installation view - back gallery

Edge is an important constant in Gorman’s painting – announcing difference with both razor-like precision and across gradients of soft, tonal change. Colour hums pitch perfect, as geometries transition and evolve within compositions. This sounds busy, and the paintings on paper and board are considered and intense. There are dancing diagonals, inset planes, and now careful curves. Colour diamonds pulse and push, forms touch, cascade and are cropped as they leave the page. Strange and compelling transparencies flicker before our eyes. Yet many of these works feel wonderfully still. Gorman’s touch activates our senses with signature elegance and restraint. To experience her painting requires scrutiny, a similar duty of care, and finally the pleasure of intimacy.
JS

 

Selected works

Bias Voile

 

Twill Barre

 

Room Tones 9 Room Tones 14

 

Room Tones 7 Room Tones 11

 

Room Tones 6 Room Tones 13

 

Room Tones 5 Room Tones 10

 

Room Tones 12 Room Tones 3

 

Room Tones 2 Room Tones 1

 

Room Tones 8 Room Tones 4

 

Room Tones 15 Room Tones 16, framed

 

 

Installing...


Kristy and Jonathan hanging a row of unframed works on paper in the front gallery

 

 

Details of works