Artists in Conversation | Caragh Thuring

Caragh Thuring will talk to Polly Staple, Director of Collection, British Art, Tate, about her artistic practice and her recent projects.

About Caragh Thuring

Born in Brussels in 1972, Caragh Thuring moved to London in 1995, the same year that she received a BA in fine art from Nottingham Trent University. Thuring’s paintings of people and places interweave history, the present, and the future into works that evoke technological and human themes. Her work sits between the abstract and the representational, where gravity and chance (in the form of drips and painterly gestures) contribute to the imagery and atmosphere. Her method conveys a sense of breathless speed. She paints fluidly and intuitively, never making preparatory drawings. Large areas of her paintings often leave the unprimed linen exposed. Some of her imagery includes figurative elements inspired by other artists such as Manet or Titian, as well as the industrial landscape.

Thuring has also worked with architecture, using the fabric of buildings and their locations as starting points to create visual and textural additions to the structures that implicate the entire space and the occupants as part of the composition. Recent commissions include “Great Things Lie Ahead” (2020) with 6a architects for Holborn Community Association, London, and “Eruzione del 2020” (2020) at Le Sirenuse, Positano, Italy. A richly illustrated first monograph, Very Fantastically Arranged, was published by MIT Press in September 2023 and is the first to comprehensively document Thuring’s work. She has participated in both solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Her work is in the collections of Buffalo AKG Art Museum in the United States and Arts Council Collection, Government Art Collection, the Hepworth Wakefield, and Tate in the United Kingdom. Thuring lives and works in London and in Argyll, Scotland.