Elizabeth Magill: Green Light Wanes-Towner Eastbourne

Green-Light Wane, 2009-10: Elizabeth Magill

The scale here is smaller compared to Magill’s previous work, it represents an exciting new departure in the evolution of her practice. The narrative and form, that hesitates between recognition and uncertainty, still shows a dense world full of abstraction, romantic landscapes and fragmented memories. Artface

The shadowy terrain of memory and protean landscape of thought is evoked in the UK premiere of a new exhibition by Elizabeth Magill, Green Light Wanes… Towner, the award-winning contemporary art museum for the South East, are pleased to announce the first UK showing of this new body of work by Magill, who also features in the Towner Collection. Each painting is a dense world, its landscapes flickering in and out of view, mirroring the way we all see the world through the filter of personal memories and changing emotions.

Elizabeth Magill, Many Moons Ago, 2010

Relatively small in scale compared to previous work, Magill’s new paintings are an exciting departure in the evolution of her practice. Narrative and form slip in and out of recognition and focus, creating a series of sweetly melancholic and compelling ‘mindscapes’; a hybrid of glimmering abstraction, haunting figuration, romantic landscape, and an ever creative and engaging play between depiction and suggestion.

Magill grew up in Northern Ireland but lives and works in London. She began exhibiting in the mid-1980s. She is a painter of prodigious versatility and inventiveness whose work has always drawn from a wide range of visual sources. While she has often integrated photographic materials and processes into her painting, in a number of novel ways, her primary fidelity has been to the medium of painting, in all its bewildering variety.

Towner’s relationship with Magill began when Overhead 3 (2002) was purchased for the Towner Collection in 2003, with the help of the Contemporary Art Society Special Collection Scheme (the work was later loaned to Ikon Gallery and BALTIC). Reflecting Towner’s wish to represent different perspectives of an artist’s career, the earlier work Silk Cut II (1990) was purchased two years later, providing a context for Towner’s first acquisition. As such, it is natural that Towner should be the first UK gallery to show this latest evolution in Magill’s work.

Elizabeth Magill, Mattered, 2011

Matthew Rowe, Artistic Director of Towner, said “This new body of work represents an exciting progression in Magill’s practice and we are delighted to present its UK premiere – with this also being Towner’s first solo painting exhibition. We have already acquired several works from different stages of Magill’s career for the Towner Collection, and so it is fitting that Towner should show this new body of work in the UK for the first time – reflecting our commitment to maintaining relationships with contemporary artists that span their career, and celebrating their achievements through time.”

Magill’s first major solo exhibition was at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, in 1990. In the same year she was included in the seminal ‘British Art Show’, which first introduced many of the most prominent younger British artists to a wider public.

Since then she has had one-person exhibitions at various venues in Ireland, Britain, Germany, France and Spain, the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin in 2003 and the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Baltic, Gateshead and Milton Keynes Gallery in 2004. She has held fellowships at the Tate Gallery, Liverpool and Saarlandisches Kunstlerhaus, Saarbrucken, Germany. Selected group exhibitions include; The Royal Academy Summer show, 2010, London (invited artist), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2008, ‘Places in Mind’, (with Adam Chodzko and Stan Douglas), Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast 2000, and ‘Premio Michetti 2000′ at Fondazione Michetti, Italy.

Magill is represented in many public and private collections worldwide including those of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Hugh lane Gallery, Dublin, the Arts Council of England, Arts Council of N.Ireland, Ulster Museum, Belfast, Southampton City Art Gallery, the British Council and the National Gallery of Australia.

This exhibition is presented in association with Kerlin Gallery, Dublin.

A fully illustrated catalogue with text by Martin Herbert accompanies this exhibition.

Issued by Towner

Admission: Free

26 March – 19 June 2011

Towner, Devonshire Park, College Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN21 4JJ

Tel: 01323 434670