Richard Wright

Richard Wright’s exhibition at The Modern Institute brings together two site-specific works alongside several new works on paper and accompanying books and notations. Enveloping the gallery, Wright has produced a new wall painting that covers the Aird’s Lane gallery space’s front façade. Hand-painted posters, pasted on to the external walls, doors, windows and shutters, are fleeting and temporal in nature. They interpret and trace the architecture of the space, transforming the building into an artwork and make painting perceptible, as a spatial experience.

Within the Aird’s Lane Bricks Space gallery, the newly opened central skylight houses Wright’s intricately designed glasswork incorporating handmade, blown glass and leading. Developed with York Glaziers Trust, the glasswork has been cut at definite angles following a complex lead-matrix composition, to produce a three dimensional effect. The distinctively textured blown glass interferes with the light to create a play on perspective through the use of light, reflection and the observer’s viewpoint. Alluding to the transient nature of Wright’s wall paintings, the glasswork creates a collection of unique drawings and patterns which shift across the walls and floor, subtly intersecting with the surrounding installation, and governed by the natural movement of light as daytime passes.

Four new paintings on paper have been installed within the Bricks Space along with a table of works on paper, accompanying books and notations sitting beneath the central skylight. Developing originally from the table in Wright’s studio, the drawings, books and notations have been laid out to provide elements of interest and interconnections with one another. Seen together, this display is not intended to be didactic, rather a quiet point of reference that provides a frame for the surrounding works.