Jane Topping: They Are the We of Me
Date: 15 September – 20 November 2005
Space: Gallery 3

Display of new work by Glasgow based artist Jane Topping, inspired by the literary production of novelist Carson McCullers and composed by painting and drawings which play with texts and the relationship between detail and totality.

Inspired by the work of novelist Carson McCullers, who mostly wrote stories about living in the American Deep South, Jane Topping’s exhibition shows a series of paintings and drawings which depict a range of still lives and landscapes but no portraits or figures. She engages with themes such as the monotony of creative labour, the importance of details, and the emotion related to absence. Particularly the absence of human figures is central in Topping’s production. She adopts themes of exclusion and belongings, rethinking them in terms of the relationship between detail and totality, but without providing any clearly readable narrative. In order to give a symbolic significance as well as an emotional aspect, she deconstructs details and includes quoted phrases juxtaposed with certain forms, often leaving the viewer with a sense of perplexity.

Artist: Jane Topping

Links:
• ‘They Are the We of Me Laurence Figgis Text’
The List
Sarah Smith review
Preview Interview with Ben Harman