Molly Thomson

Molly Thomson’s work concerns the performance of the painting as an object. She is interested in conditions that confine, resist and limit, and in what happens when those given conditions are subject to question and boundaries are breached. Rules are set and rules are broken. The object evolves through the challenging and reordering of edges and surfaces. 

The process often begins with de-stabilising a panel’s rectangular format through acts of cutting that destroy its symmetry and begin to animate the object. Removed elements are returned, recycled or repurposed, but the tiny losses that occur with each cut cannot be entirely made up for; scars and mendings may be evident in surfaces formed of delicate layers of poured paint; elements which seem to be exposed parts of the painting’s substructure are found to be not in the expected place or orientation, triggering complication in the object.

In other work the process operates almost in reverse. Originally starting with abandoned off-cuts, these objects develop through a piecemeal accumulation of elements, generating works that seem to be articulated and (possibly) capable of movement. However, things are in arrested states, with a poise or organisation that might be provisional.

With their imperfect geometries and changeable spaces the painting/objects are newly-ordered, but not without uncertainty.

Biography
Molly Thomson was born in Scotland. She studied sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art and art history at Edinburgh University, followed by an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art. She subsequently taught at Norwich University of the Arts and now works full-time in her studio near Norwich.

Recent exhibitions: Image_Object, Poimena Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania (2020), Vitalistic Fantasies, Cello Factory, London (2020), Orbit, Poimena Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania (2021), Que des Femmes, 6th Biennal of Non-Objective Art, Point de Claix, France (2021), Line, Colour, Form, & Gallery, Edinburgh (2022), An Expanding Field, Gloam, Sheffield (2022), At Cross Purposes, Elysium, Swansea (2023), Trialogue, Galerie Biesenbach, Cologne (2023), Realignment, solo show, & Gallery, Edinburgh (2023), Molly Thomson and Franziska Reinbothe, Raumx, London (2023), Adrift, Primeyarc, Yarmouth, Assembly, Rye Creative Centre, Rye (2024), 3D, Raum Schroth, Museum Wilhelm Morgner, Soest, Germany (2024)