Caragh Thuring

Caragh Thuring’s paintings display the active work of looking, taking apart and then reassembling our surroundings. The structural aspect of making pictures is brought to the fore through multiple techniques of printing, stitching and spraying. Objects that point to interior and exterior spaces – such as window panes, volcanoes, patterned cloth, cranes and bricks – recur across her canvases, showing Thuring’s ongoing interest in the industries and processes that have built up around modern society. Handelaar (Dutch for ‘trader’ or ‘seller’) is a composition based around the sketched silhouette of a body in a dress, leaning dramatically, one arm and leg thrust out. The image feels as if it’s been taken from an advertising or fashion spread, and Thuring picks up and runs with the triangulation of the pose within a layer of abstraction, shown as thin red, white and pink areas that jostle on the raw linen. Three white horizontal spray-painted lines across the head of the figure accentuate it and delete it at the same time, leaving the viewer with a satisfying mystery of source and style.