Paula McLoughlin - Clouds can be deceptive

 

Wednesday 23 October - Sunday 10 November 2024

Click here for artwork by Paula McLoughlin

In the exhibition Clouds can be deceptive, Paula McLoughlin explores the duality of clouds as objects that are both delightful and deceiving. 

Clouds have long held special place in our collective imagination. As children, lying on our backs, gazing up at the sky, playing games of discovery—finding the familiar and creating narratives, blissfully unaware that clouds serve as both subjects of beauty and destruction, symbols of impermanence and change. They can be threatening and divine. 

Through the exploration of artists who have also looked to the sky such as John Constable, with his meticulous studies and his dedication to capturing its depth and dynamism of the British sky through to Berndnaut Smilde’s ethereal indoor clouds challenging our perception of the permanence of form by capturing a momentary existence that fades almost as soon as it appears, each with their own interpretations to clouds, capturing their ephemeral beauty and inviting us to see beyond their surface

The artist also wants to invite the viewer to see beyond the surface. McLoughlin employs methods of digital manipulation to disguise a cloud's origin as being natural or manufactured and, along with the print techniques of colour separation deconstruction and reconstruction, the artist is splitting the images apart into their constituent marks or dots and bringing them back together, as you move closer to the prints the form dissolves

McLoughlin's aim in these prints is to present clouds not as singular snapshots but as impressions of an ongoing transformation.