THE UNIVERSITY of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) is delighted to present Disruptive Painting, a groundbreaking exhibition at Swansea College of Art’s Stiwdio Griffith. Curated by Maison Trampoline, and organised by UWTSD’s Professor Sue Williams, Programme Manager of Fine Art: Studio Site and Context, this ambitious project, which can be viewed from February 7 to March 12, brings together 14 leading British and Irish painters, whose work has never before been considered side-by-side.
The exhibition investigates how disruption operates within painting today – whether as a formal strategy, a conceptual framework, or an intervention in the artist’s own creative routines.
What does it mean for painting, a medium with centuries of history, to be disruptive? Disruptive Painting explores how painters innovate in response to new technologies, shifting social contexts, and the demands of their own practices. Through a taxonomical curatorial approach, the exhibition traces unexpected connections between artists, revealing new patterns, affinities, and divergences across their work.
The exhibition features work by Alejandro Luna, Bex Massey, David Surman, Donal Maloney, Emma Cousin, John Walter, Kate Bright, Lubaina Himid, Lulu Bennett, Mark Jackson, Ross Taylor, Sheila Rennick, Sue Williams, and Vilte Fuller.
Together, these artists navigate a range of contemporary strategies – from photorealism, autoethnographic painting, and world-building, to chromatic space, material experimentation, narrative and figurative disruption, collage-thinking, the ongoing project of feminism, genre collision, and the legacies of Abstract Expressionism and Sigmar Polke.
A series of in-studio interviews conducted during the research process offers insights into how painters work with and against habit, routine, and other creative constraints, adapting painting as a technology through continual disruption. The project asks:
- What constitutes a painting practice today?
- How do artists design their images—through top-down planning, bottom-up emergence, or both?
- When do routines require disruption, and how is this shift achieved?
- How does disruption function creatively in the making of paintings?
Maison Trampoline is the collaborative practice of visual artist John Walter and transdisciplinary researcher Alejandro Luna, founded in 2023. Their mission is “to raise awareness of complex subjects using provocative and playful hybrid approaches.” Their work questions existing taxonomies, creates hybrids and mutants, and queers disciplinary boundaries by inverting hierarchies of expert/amateur. Outputs span material objects, written scholarship, fashion shows, prototypes, moving image works, events, and exhibitions.
Dr John Walter is an award-winning British artist known for large-scale projects including Alien Sex Club (2015), CAPSID(2018), and Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness (Hayward Touring, 2017), for which he won the Hayward Curatorial Open.
Dr Alejandro Luna is an Associate Lecturer in Sustainability and Innovation MA Biodesign, Central Saint Martins, UAL. His practice spans biodesign, ecological and artistic practices, evolutionary biology, sustainability, and innovation studies.
Public viewing begins on February 7 and will continue till March 12, open from 10am to 4:30pm (Monday to Friday) at Stiwdio Griffiths, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Swansea, SA1 3EU.
Follow Maison Trampoline on Instagram: @stiwdio_griffith @lamaisontrampoline
This event is supported by UWTSD Catalyst Fund and Maison Trampoline.
