Nomas* Projects / Art, Dundee

Cover-Up (Repeat)

Cover-Up (Repeat)

My ongoing painting practice focuses on breaking down physical forms, surfaces and textures. The work encompasses an interplay between structured and intuitive gradual abstraction abstractions; investigating processes of slow looking and the distillation of glimpses and gestures through painting. My work is also positioned as an attempt to foreground the highs and lows of studio practices – inviting consideration of periods of working/ not working/ not knowing what to do.

I’m interested in thinking about how artists make, exhibit, re-work, love and hate what they do. Recent semi-abstracted paintings have focused on repeated mark-making, cursive script and have zoomed-in on small aspects of previous pieces … trying to get to the bottom of what it is about them that seems to ‘work’.

Solo exhibitions in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester and Berlin have made use of painting and drawing processes as well as ambitious, large-scale, expanded installations. I have also exhibited work widely in recent group shows including in New York, London, Seoul and Beijing, and have been included in the 2025 John Moores Painting Prize.

My interests also relate to consideration of what the artist studio represents; what it means to operate in a painting/ creative space and how the very idea of the studio offers positive possibilities for making, but equally can also represent a barrier to creative development. As an artist who ‘thinks through making’, the development of visual research is connected to the process of exhibiting work in different contexts – in order to better comprehend how the seemingly abstract pushing and pulling of pigment on substrate can connect with, or can refer to, quite unexpected tactile physical experiences.

Artist's Bio

Graham Lister (b.1982)

Painter based in Glasgow, Scotland.

In 2016, he completed a Practice-based PhD at the Glasgow School of Art. He currently works at the GSA, as a Lecturer in Painting and Printmaking and in the Widening Participation department.

PhD (Practice-based) - The Glasgow School of Art FHEA - Fellow of the Higher Education Academy MFA - Gray's School of Art MA (Art History) - The University of Glasgow

Artist's Website

• grahamlisterart.com