Thérèse Oulton reviewed in Studio International

Sam Cornish in Studio International
Published 9 September 2024

“At Vardaxoglou Gallery is a bewitching, challenging and revelatory exhibition of paintings from the last 40 years of Thérèse Oulton’s output. Across two small spaces, a dozen works are arranged visually rather than chronologically and provide a succinct introduction to an artist who has a surprisingly low profile, despite being represented by Marlborough Gallery for three decades before its recent closure. Living and working in London, her previous solo exhibition here was in 2014.

Oulton’s early career is shown by three small paintings made between 1983 and 1985, shortly after her time as a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Art. These are images that return to and linger among the roots of modern art. Their spaces are rich and shifting, implying shadowy interiors or encased in nocturnal or arboreal gloom. The mysteriousness of Romantic or symbolist painting is accompanied by some of their accoutrements. There are glimpses of the metallic sheen of armour seen through darkness, a murky path, a wavering candle, heavy red fabric, a spiral staircase of uncertain destination. Fuseli’s The Nightmare (1781) perhaps, in which the characters have left the stage or been almost fully absorbed into exploratory darts and scumbles of paint.”

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