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HAYLEY TOMPKINS

Biography

In her paintings and sculptures, Hayley Tompkins seeks to explore and expand paints’ application as a transformative tool. Often modest in scale, Tompkins’ energetic works are born from an experimental approach rooted in the navigation between intent and spontaneity. Soaked in paint, the works’ surfaces remain unpredictable as they accrue swaths of fluorescent color, and layers of brushstrokes that develop from both free-form associations, and distilled calculated interventions. Fluctuating between sensual, organic marks, and those that are angular, repetitive, and orderly, Tompkins employs these conflicting languages of mark-making to create images that are both serious and playful - the product of multiple acts of insertion, deletion, and transformation. The resulting images provoke our inherent desire to rationalize images, but firmly defy categorization, encouraging the viewer to engage with the works on their own terms, with feeling rather than reason, and as both an image and an object.

Tompkins (born 1971, Leighton Buzzard) lives and works in Glasgow. Solo exhibitions of Tompkins work include Far, Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, 2022-2023, Features, Andrew Kreps Gallery, 2022, After a Long Sleep, It Woke Up, The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Bag of rainbow, Recent Activity, Birmingham, 2019, Stick crystals to paintings, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, 2018, Lulu, Mexico City, 2016, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, 2013, and Currents, Studio Voltaire, London, 2011, among others. Additionally, Tompkins participated in Breaking the Mould: Sculpture by Women since 1945, which originated at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK, 2021, and traveled to Djanogly Gallery, University of Nottingham, UK, 2021-2022, Termite Tapeworm Fungus Moss, Intermedia Gallery, CCA, Glasgow as part of Glasgow International 2021, Drawing Biennial 2019, Drawing Room, London, Scotland + Venice 2013: Sworn / Campbell / Tompkins, Collateral Event of the 55th International Art Exhibition – Venice Biennale, Palazzo Pisani, Venice, and The Imminence of Poetics, the 2012 Sao Paolo Biennale, Sao Paolo.

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