This exhibition presents a selection of recent works by fifteen British artists who demonstrate the richness and vigour of contemporary painting in the UK. Featuring new acquisitions to the British Council Collection, alongside generous loan works, The Painting Show presents work by Merlin Carpenter, Stuart Cumberland, Dexter Dalwood, Kaye Donachie, Michael Fullerton, Celia Hempton, Morag Keil, Fiona MacKay, Lucy McKenzie, Dawn Mellor, Alan Michael, Michael Simpson, Sue Tompkins, Neal Jones and Pádraig Timoney.
The artists included in this exhibition have been selected because of the different ways in which they can be perceived as manipulating their own individual status as a painter. Be it by denying the romanticism imposed upon the act of painting, aping historical styles to communicate personal agendas, aggravating the museum collection by inserting subversive figures or rejecting and manipulating the male gaze.
This text is published on the occasion of a British Council Touring Exhibition “The Painting Show”, inaugurated at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius. Lithuania (22nd January – 7th March 2016)