Hayley Tompkins

Drawing Room is delighted to announce Hayley Tompkins’ first solo exhibition in London. The exhibition will include new commissioned works of painted wood constructions, works on paper, a film and an artists’ book titled Re. The title of the exhibition uses the preposition – Re – and encourages us to question its formal usage. The constructions, works on paper, film and book are not about ‘something’ – they are ‘about’ the acts of looking, hearing and touching.

Tompkins’ is known for her minimal installations of works on paper and sculptural elements. A move to film seems a natural progression for an artist who is trying to create a seamless rhythm – a continuum – from the mind of the artist to the hand that produces the work – and her work is very hand made – to the physical placement within a given space. As Tompkins has said “it is important that the work exists as naturally as possible … nothing should feel too forced… The way things are arranged should feel quite behavioural, as if someone had been there and done that thing”. Her works possess a tangential and contentious quality yet their sense of place is definite and unrelenting. Her works are holistic – there appears to be no separation between their physical characteristics, their process of production or, crucially for Tompkins’ practice, their placement. The individual pieces cannot be divorced from their surroundings or each other.

Like the works on paper, the film hovers between abstraction and representation and address Tompkins’ interest in different realities that can be experienced simultaneously. It is made primitively, using a hand-held camera and the footage combines interior and exterior spaces interspersed with reprographic images.

Tompkins was born in Leighton Buzzard, UK, in 1971 and lives and works in Glasgow. She has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Inverleith House, Edinburgh in Spring 2009. Recent solo exhibitions include: “Lent Moving Pictures”, Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin (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; “When I broke the room”, Jack Hanley, San Francisco; “When it broke”, (with Sue Tompkins), Art Forum Berlin, Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin; “Them and Ten Thousand Cups”, The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2005). Recent group exhibitions include: “Open End”, John Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles (2007); “Planting the tele”, (curator), Mary Mary, Glasgow; “Life’s a Beach”, Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; “You always say no to Ibitha”, Alexandre Pollazzon Ltd, London; “If it didn’t exist you’d have to invent it: a partial Showroom history, The Showroom, London (2006): Min inimalism and After IV”, New Acquisitions DaimlerChrysler Contemporary, Berlin; “Solo Show Solo Soul”, project by Chris Johanson, Baronian Francey & FRAC, Haute Normandie (2005). In 2007 she undertook the Spike Island café design commission with Sue Tompkins, in collaboration with Caruso St John Architects, Bristol.