Hayley Tompkins: Autobuilding

21 February to 19 April 2009. Tues - Sun, 10am - 5.30pm

Hayley Tompkins
Supra, 2009
Mixed media in display cabinet, 17 pieces

Hayley Tompkins has received recognition at home and abroad for her abstract compositions on paper and sculptures (or objects, as she prefers to think of them) which are at once highly distinctive and original, yet which evoke feelings which can seem strangely familiar. Many of the works in "Autobuilding" (including a small wall drawing) were made for this exhibition and arranged by the artist throughout the seven rooms on ground and first floors. Work not made specifically for the exhibition were made within the last two years, including Tompkins' 4-minute film Interstice (2008), (exhibited in "Re", a solo exhibition at London's Drawing Room, in 2008).

Typically, the works were on a small scale and made of unassuming materials; twigs, leaves and peel, fragments of photographs, discarded mobile phones. Tompkins calls some of these "Metabuilts" which she describes as: "domestic objects constructed on an intimate scale from the kind of stuff one finds lying about, like scrapbook oddments or fallen branches on the grass... (they) are somewhere between dream, reconstruction and product... with the emphasis falling in that order."

It has been remarked: "Tompkins' work does one very simple and kind of old-fashioned thing as well as millions of complex things. It tries to express things for which there aren't really words: real, recognizable things that I can't describe but which I feel are incontrovertibly there." (Robert Johnston, Glasgow, 2004).

Hayley Tompkins (born 1971, Leighton Buzzard) lives and works in Glasgow. After studying a B.A. in Painting and an M.F.A. at Glasgow School of Art, she has since exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally both in her own right and collaboratively with the artist collective "Elizabeth Go" (with Victoria Morton, Sue Tompkins and Sarah Tripp). Recent solo exhibitions include: "Re", The Drawing Room, London, 2008; "Lent Moving Pictures" Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin, 2007; "transfer" (with Sue Tompkins), Spike Island, Bristol, 2007; "Hayley Tompkins and Sue Tompkins", Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, 2006; "In the zone of your eyes" (with Sue Tompkins), West London Projects, London, 2005; "When I broke the room", Jack Hanley, San Fransisco; "When it broke" (with Sue Tompkins), Artforum, Berlin, 2005; "Them and Ten Thousand Cups", The Modern Institute, Glasgow. Hayley was nominated for the Beck's Futures prize in 2004. This is her first solo museum exhibition in Scotland.

All works courtesy of the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd.

Exhibition Events

Hayley Tompkins in conversation with Darren Rhymes
Saturday 14 March, Inverleith House

Hayley Tompkins: Installation view "Autobuilding", Inverleith House, 22 February - 19 April 2009

Hayley Tompkins
Data, 2009
Clay, found object

Hayley Tompkins
Advent II 2008
Wood, gouache, paper
59x43x3 cm, 23.2x16.9x1.2 ins

All works courtesy of the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd.

Download:"Minimal Show, Maximum Effect", Moria Jeffrey, Scotland on Sunday Review, 2 March 2009.

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