MEMOIRS MATERIALISED

SELECTED ARTWORKS

This exhibition is experienced less as a conventional painting show and more as an installation—an environment carefully choreographed by Ruann Coleman. The paintings are not simply hung; they are positioned within tall, skeletal wooden structures that occupy the gallery like a quiet stand of trees. Together, they form what might be described as a conceptual forest: a field of fallen twigs reassembled into vertical presences, each holding an image, each asserting its own spatial logic. Movement through the room becomes part of the work, with sightlines constantly shifting as viewers navigate between forms rather than along a wall.

While painting may be a newly foregrounded avenue in Coleman’s practice, the way the work is shown remains unmistakably sculptural. Presentation is not secondary—it is integral. The structures echo the logic of the twig itself: upright, provisional, slightly precarious, and responsive to space. Paintings appear embedded within these supports, sometimes exposed, sometimes partially obscured, refusing the neutrality of the white wall. In doing so, the works blur distinctions between painting, sculpture, and installation, insisting that images exist within space rather than apart from it.

This “conceptual forest” reframes the paintings as elements within a larger system rather than isolated objects. Each work reads like a fragment—part of a dispersed landscape where repetition, variation, and spacing matter as much as image-making. The twigs, once again, define the conditions: they dictate rhythm, orientation, and proximity. What emerges is not simply a debut painting exhibition, but a spatial proposition—one where painting is absorbed into Coleman’s ongoing enquiry into form, structure, and how meaning grows when works are allowed to stand, lean, and breathe together.