France-Lise McGurn: Aloud, The exposé

Composed of a wooden frame and painted Perspex panels, McGurn’s characteristically fluid figures are all the more dynamic when presented across transparent screens, appearing to reach, lean and leap through the air. The outline of faces, torsos and limbs traverse painterly swathes of colour to form a narrativedefying ensemble of figures, crested by glowing neons.

 

First exhibited at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum as part of Glasgow International festival oversummer 2021, Aloud, The exposé also draws on the artist’s personal experiences of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum; the hours she spent there as a child and then later as an adult, inhabiting but also observing. Albert Moore’s painting, Reading Aloud (1884), was a key a point of departure for McGurn, in particular Moore’s positioning of models, the work’s varied textures, and its ambiguous lack of urgency or context.