Caragh Thuring's Paintings Explore Representation and Illusion at Hastings Contemporary

Caragh Thuring's exhibition at Hastings Contemporary showcases paintings that interrogate representation through formal devices. Her work employs a custom technique where images are woven into canvases before additional painting, disrupting traditional surface-image relationships. Early pieces like Palm Springs (2009) introduce recurring motifs—unprimed canvas fields where basic forms suggest trees, walls, and buildings. Later works incorporate everyday subjects including fast food, tartan patterns, sportswomen, volcanoes, and nuclear submarines, all treated with humor about their own fragility. The Silent Service (2016) depicts a submarine as a simple black wedge against raw canvas implying sea. Gender-tinged humor appears in David Gandy (2014), featuring male models composed of brick patterns. Volcanic imagery recurs in August 1779 (2011) and Eruzione del (2019), the latter suggesting a painting on tiled walls. Thuring's approach domesticates modernist concerns like canvas edges and flatness while creating layered, self-aware visual experiences. The exhibition runs through 12 March.