France-Lise McGurn

An abstract neon light showing two legs kicking the air in pointed heels, hangs at the top of a large wooden structure with glass panels and covered in fast gestural line paintings of figures and faces. The structure sits behind two stone columns on each of which a large scale canvas hangs, depicting fast gestural paintings of nude figures crouched and seated in pointed heels

Close up of a painting on glass depicting a face with black fast strokes and blocks of pale blue, pink, green and orange through

A stained wood structure sits on a checkerboard marble floor in between stone columns. The structure is painted with fast gestural strokes of paint depicting a nude figure looking over their shoulder

a large scale canvas hangs on a stone column. Fast lines depict a figure seated and turned back towards us, their arms raised, they look out past us. Blocks of yellow, pale pink, blue, green and red are layered through

a large scale canvas hangs on a stone column. Fast lines depict a figure crouched in pointed heels, their arm across their chest and hand resting on their face they look out at the viewer. Blocks of yellow, pale pink, blue, green and red are layered through

Close up of a painting on glass depicting a face with yellow and pink lines and blocks of pale blue, pink, green and orange below

Close up of a painting on glass depicting a face with fast lines and blocks of pink and yellow surrounding it

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

France-Lise McGurn’s newly commissioned installation drew on her 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. In particular, Albert Moore’s well-loved painting, Reading Aloud (1884), provided a point of departure for McGurn: especially the very specific positioning and postures of the models, its textures and ambiguous lack of urgency or context.

McGurn’s figurative practice delivers a wholly immersive experience, launching the viewer into a three-dimensional world of archetypal women and men, often portrayed in a state of undress, reclining in both ecstasy and agony. Sometimes they appear tense and attentive, sometimes languid, bathed in an air of euphoria.

In McGurn’s new work for GI2021, she built on themes evident throughout her practice, such as the dichotomies of presence and absence, and interior versus exterior lives. Her fluid application of paint breaks from the canvas, emerging unrestrained across sculptural forms on the museum balcony. The compositional layering of paint onto transparent Perspex panels directly reflected the exposure of private lives and intimacy so frequently at play in McGurn’s work.

Commissioned by Glasgow International

Supported by Henry Moore Foundation