Caragh Thuring was born in Brussels in 1972 and has lived in the United Kingdom since 1973. Receiving a BA Hons in Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University in 1995, she moved to London the same year and currently divides her time between London and Argyll in Scotland.
Thuring’s unique language relishes but undermines the inherent flatness of painting, destablising the viewer into reassessing how they have been conditioned to look and see. Never making preparatory drawings, Thuring paints fluidly and intuitively, building and arranging imagery in opposition to traditional visual and logical hierarchies. In a constant filtering of the world, her fractured compositions of people and places interweave history, the present and the future into a glimpsed experience that’s both technological and human.
For recent works, Thuring has commissioned bespoke cloth to use as her canvas. Digital renderings of previous paintings, photographs she has taken, and found images are woven on a loom, sewn together and stretched before being painted onto - ‘I want to build the work into the surface, to continue the work I’ve already begun.’
In her series of window paintings, or ‘lateral portraits’ as the artist refers to them, window ledge displays reveal the self fashioning of the buildings’ unseen occupants. Thuring is curious about what lies beyond, out of sight, or beneath the surface, be it man-made, a person, or a landscape. Volcanoes, their geological structures, and nuclear submarines both reoccur in her work and further emphasise the clash of the natural and the manufactured.
In addition, Thuring has worked with architecture, using the fabric of the buildings and their location as a starting point to create visual and textural additions that implicate the entire space and the occupants as a part of the composition.
Solo exhibitions include: Caragh Thuring, Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, England (2022); Caragh Thuring, Luisa Strina Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil (2019); Builder, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago IL (2019); Caragh Thuring, Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples, Italy (2019); Caragh Thuring, Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco CA (2018); Caragh Thuring, Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins, Question Centre, Westminster Waste, London, England (2016); Caragh Thuring, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, England (2016); Caragh Thuring, Chisenhale Gallery, London, England (2014/15); Caragh Thuring, Simon Preston Gallery, New York NY (2015).
Selected group exhibitions include: Mixing it Up; Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London, England (2021); Masterpieces in Miniature: The 2021 Model Art Gallery, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, England (2021); Vesuvio Quotidiano Vesuvio Universale, Museo di San Martino, Naples, Italy (2019); Slow Painting, Leeds Art gallery, Leeds, England; travelling to: The Levinsky Gallery, The Arts Institute - University of Plymouth, England, (2019); Criminal Ornamentation, Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester, England; travelling to: Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, England; Longside Gallery, Arts Council Collection, Wakefield, England; Southampton Art Gallery, Southampton, England, (2018/2019); Virginia Woolf, An exhibition inspired by her writings, Tate St Ives, Cornwall, England; travelling to: Pallant House, Chichester, England; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England, (2018); Women’s Art Society II, MOSTYN, Llandudno, Wales, England (2015).
Recent commissions include: Great Things Lie Ahead, 2020 with 6a architects for Holborn Community Association, London and Eruzione del 2020, 2020 at Le Sirenuse, Positano, Italy.
Thuring’s works are in the collections of Tate, England; Arts Council Collection, England; Government Art Collection, England; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo NY, USA; and Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, England as well as private UK and international collections.
