Eruzione del 2020

It’s as if an 18^th century print by a northern artist attracted south by the sublime thrill of Vesuvius had taken on a strange afterlife. Painted on stretched cloth bearing a pattern from a tile Caragh Thuring came across in a Neapolitan cloister, the blustering volcano spews smoke that betrays a lewd sense of humour. From below, a sail, or perhaps a road, intrudes. Nearby, four painted gesso panels continue the theme, on either side of a demure bar counter – that of Le Sirenuse’s original Champagne Bar.

UK-based artist Thuring is fascinated by the rapport between the natural and the manufactured, by hidden forces that bubble or thrust to the surface, by bricks, submarines, volcanoes, the unwieldy machines we make to make things, and what lies behind the windows we present to the world. Recently, she has been using as her canvas stretched woven cloth that incorporates motifs she has found here and there, so that she can “build the work into the surface, continue the work I’ve already begun”. Her works feature in the permanent collections of, among other institutions, the UK’s Tate galleries and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.