Garth Gratrix / Dip in the Pool

This debut solo Irish exhibition of Blackpool based British artist Garth Gratrix embraces their returning focus on the interplay between precision and play, structure and softness, visibility and care. Moving along a horizon between the formal and frolicsome, they use the phrase “Formal/Frolic” to describe the shifting relationship between the disciplined and the playful within their practice. The formal speaks to structure — to the architectures, systems and materials that shape how art is made and shown. The frolic is its necessary counterpart: queerness, joy, mischief, and care.

This inherent queerness, or ‘off-straightness’, is framed using a self-imposed rule of ‘nine inches apart, together, away, repeat’. Enlivening and complicating the artist’s aesthetic and conceptual relationships into a nuanced queer expression. The works here exist along this horizon, employing a pastel palette contiguous with angular forms and soft objects to evoke an alluring habitat filled with playful interventions. 

Gratrix is founding director of Abingdon Studios Ltd (est. 2014) and recipient of the Clore Visual Art Fellowship 2023. 

They are currently a PhD candidate working with New Contemporaries and the School of Arts & Creative Industries at Teesside University on a new research strand for the organisation, designed to strengthen how we support early career artists.

Image Credit: Garth Gratrix, Flamboyant Flamingos, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, UK (2024). Photo credit: Benjamin Nuttall