Like Don Peebles, his teacher at the Ilam School of Fine Arts, Grant Lingard was drawn to formal relationships between binary opposites. Yet even in this early work, it’s clear he was interested in combining these with a politically engaged practice. Made for his first solo exhibition, Skeletons’, it plays white against black, large against small, inside(r) against outside(r), open against closed – evoking a sense of conflict and power imbalance. Grant’s minimal style and use of familiar, ordinary materials are already recognisable in this deliberately undone painting, as is a sense of risk and violence. Exposed nails bristle from the wood, threatening anyone who strays too close.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- 21 July 2024)