Ruth Murray and Linda Hemmersbach
13 June – 18 July 2024
Exhibition open from 9am – 5pm on weekdays
Join us for the exhibition reception on Saturday 15 June from 3 – 5pm
Artist tour of the exhibition at 4pm
About the exhibition
‘Holding Time’ is an exhibition by Ruth Murray and Linda Hemmersbach. It explores their mutual fascination with the materiality of paint and its ability to evoke places and sensations through colour, surface and touch. Focusing on the relationship between ourselves and the environments we inhabit and through which we move, the exhibition aims to show the many shared avenues that their studio practices have taken. Themes such as landscape, geological matter, deep time, the body and birth, are presented as constellations of memory, consciousness and hope.
‘Holding Time’ was first shown as a two-person show at Rogue Studio’s Project Space in Manchester in February 2023.
Ruth’s brushwork has the messy, writhing quality of natural forms. At close range her scenes and isolated figures dissolve into patterns and surfaces, establishing striking correspondences between trees, leaves, stones, and waves. Hinting at natural forms and forces, Linda’s paintings impart the sensation of staying, looking and feeling. Both artists convey the universality of matter as always in the process of silent reformation and resurfacing. In moving between the paintings, the viewer experiences a transference of energy as if from one manifestation of this underlying process to another.
The artists’ interest in the world’s visible and invisible processes is reflected in their handling of paint as a malleable material and physical container of time – resulting in works that are densely layered, allowing brushstroke and touch to carry a sense of energy and sensitivity for their subjects. In their sculptures, too, both artists favour malleable materials with a prehistoric pedigree, clay and metal.
The show elucidates a tension, viewing nature as a repository of the deep past, but also viewing it as a timeless place that bears witness, an immanent, everlasting presence. The works hint at something just out of reach, beyond our understanding: a world of its own, complete in itself, independent of us. Yet this underlying world also runs through us all: we are ourselves manifestations of universal matter, like layers of sedimentary rock, holding time.
Artist Biographies
- Ruth Murray, 1984, Birmingham, UK. Based in Manchester UK
Ruth Murray graduated from the Royal College of Art and was the Derek Hill Scholar at the British School at Rome in 2008. Her notable exhibitions include Northern Stars at the A Foundation, Saatchi’s 4 New Sensations, The Creative Cities Collection at the Barbican and the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery. She was awarded an Elizabeth Greenshields grant in 2021 and 2024, she won the Jackson’s Painting Prize in 2020 and she was shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2019, (subsequently elected as a member in 2023). Her work is in private and public collections worldwide, including UNESCO’s Creative Cities Collection, the Whitaker Museum and Manchester Art Gallery.
- Linda Hemmersbach, 1984 in Cologne, Germany. Based in Glossop, UK
Linda Hemmersbach studied at Central Saint Martins (2008) and Wimbledon College of Art (2010). She has exhibited and curated exhibitions across the UK and Europe, including Flatland, The FG Gallery, Cheshire (2024); Outside In, Set, West Ealing, London (2024); Seeing Remains, Oceans Apart, Salford (2023); Holding Time, Rogue Project Space, Manchester (2023); Windowpane (curated by Alex Crocker), Oceans Apart, Salford (2023); Thought Forms, PS Mirabel, Manchester (2022); Fayre Share Fayre (A Modest Show), Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2022); Close to Home, JGM Gallery, London (2021); Talking Sense, Portico Library, Manchester (2020); Deep Time (solo show), The Old Bank Residency, Manchester (2019), Vein (solo show), Cass Art Manchester (2019); Shaping the Void II, Tannery Projects, London (2017). She was included in the John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool in 2016.
