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Virginia Verran

@virginiarverran

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Painter, lives in London, studio in Bethnal Green. Taught at Chelsea, Slade, Falmouth, now Turps. Represents Estate of Bruce Bernard

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Virginia Verran – interview

Verran paints large atmospheric spaces filled with small, often cryptic, graphic details. She explains why she doesn’t see herself as an abstract artist, but desires to keep the viewer on their toes – or even on ‘metaphorical barbed wire’.

Interview with @virginiarverran by @samuelrcornish online now - link in bio

📸 Virginia Verran, 2024. Image copyright and courtesy the Artist.

#virginiaverran #contemporarypainting #womenartists

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It happened.

The summer group was compassionate, alive, layered, and so rich with genuine love. There was so much humanity in our group, the warmth shared throughout the 8 weeks come through in the show.

The show was a blur, from members the Arab Art Dialogue and Frieze connect members and collectors to friends and family.

The mentors are the real backbone of this whole thing though. To see painters pushing their practices and questioning paint alongside the madness of giving such rich knowledge, insight and support is unreal.

This summer has been a restoration of faith, in colleagues, in conversations, in friendships and in the practice.

الحمدلله

Summer group
@sibyllelaubscher @paperainbows @ryzbee @claireprouv_studio @camilacandiab @niah_mcgiff @mxntdd @stevenedwardrobertson @ludileiva @tinana_art @cstroebelart @maysalmoosawi @__under_new_management__ @guljaholland @its.a.picnick @emiliamomen

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turps turps turps

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Two months at Turps are coming to an end and I can’t believe how quickly it passed. It feels like we only just got here yesterday.

So grateful for all the mentors and fellow artists who shared their thoughts, opened my eyes to new perspectives, and helped me see my work in a different way. I’m so excited to see what comes out of it once I’m back in my studio.

And so much love to everyone who came to support me last night. My heart is full 💘

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So grateful for these incredible 8 weeks, sharing ideas and lots of fun with the best group ❤️

Everyone is welcome to our show which opens Friday 11th 6pm - 9pm at Turps

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I assumed to seek knowledge, to know more, will push the practice into new territory, but to allow faith to coexist with knowing is where the practice really grows. The tension lies in the struggle of restraint. To question and challenge my understanding of what the practice is over the past few months has been wild.

Coming from movement and physicality, I pushed gesture to expand space. But with every gesture I felt there was another depth missing. A dimension I wasn’t able to see yet, movement didn’t feel enough. That became the moment of crisis.

I keep thinking about:

الروح من أمر ربي وما أوتيتم من العلم إلا قليلاً

How knowing is an actionable skill, while faith is the ability to sit with the unknown is much harder.

Physically, I have been doing so much sitting, looking. What happens in total stillness? How can stillness have its place?

To find that in a mark has become my new obsession. To bring depth to the outward was to go inward. So I sit, looking. Holding. In response, a new tension appears.

Guided by @katrinablannin @scott_mccracken_ @anselkrut @joncarchdeacon @karolinaalbricht @matt_lippiatt @virginiarverran working alongside so many new friends and brilliant artists, grateful for @turpsbanana and all that it is.

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Some highlights from the first half of my @turpsbanana residency. It has been nothing short of spectacular and Id like to thank the tutors and mentors for all the conversations, organised excursions and insights. But most of all thank you for the amazing cohort I already call friends 🤍😮‍💨 More news to follow tomorrow… 👀

#turps #turpspainters #artresidency #contemporarypaintings

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For the last eight weeks I’ve been on the summer residency @turpsbanana ! Being mentored & critiqued by @virginiarverran @scott_mccracken_ and other amazing artists.

It’s been the most inspiring few months… Being encouraged to make a few bad paintings has been game-changing, it’s taken away any pressure & has allowed me to just play.

I was halfway through my first painting when Virginia told me it was finished. I ended up wiping back any new mark I made until I had to concede she was right..

The painting, slide 7, is Jack asleep in France. I’m convinced anyone who naps in public is still listening, and leaving this space in his head allows you to imagine what he might have been thinking or dreaming about.

I’ve been wiping areas back, letting the paintings make themselves & also using colour to translate the emotional state of the person in front of me, or my own, onto the subject. . ..

A few of the pieces I made will be exhibited in the gallery & studio spaces opening 11 Sept & runs to the Sunday🚶‍♀️🚶🏽

📷@__under_new_management__

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The Artist's Frame exhibition has now finished. The show featured over 30 artists, including Virginia Verran, highlighted here.

"The red and white tickertape ‘frame’ secures the fugitive image which is coming into vision as if in a developing tank, secured again by the striped lines pulled across, behind and on top of it.

The image is fugitive because that is how I like my images to remain; unknowable, inexplicable but warmly suggestive of flesh, oscillation and a magnetic force holding the component parts together, which to me always, vitally approaches human presence, spinning in space.

Equally important is acknowledging the artifice in the painterly activity, bringing us back to paint dragged, stippled and thinly erased, and true to itself. The ‘frame’ is an often-used repetitive striping device at the edge of the illusory space to emphasise the flat surface and to tickle the eye".

Verran (b.1961 Cornwall) completed her BA at Winchester School of Art and MA at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Public gallery solo shows include Newlyn Gallery, Cornwall. Solos include Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Norway curated by Gavin Jantjes. She has exhibited in the Liverpool John Moores (2009 & 2018), won 1st prize in the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2010) and received a Pollock Krasner Award (2022).
Public collections include Arts Council England, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Hepworth Wakefield and private collections in the UK, New York, Holland, Germany, France, Norway and Japan.

Image 1:
Red/Pink (adjustments), oil on board 60 cms diameter, 2025

Image 2: installation shot Cesare De Giglio @cesare_dg

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"Hands of the artist" #highlights #artisttalk x2 fabulous Talks first off @virginiarverran who i had to "sadly leave early to catch a train homeand return with a emptied suitcase lol & our very own Artist @jo.guile with all her experience of being a working #sculptor with a Q&A after plus a #photodump #selfie

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"On way studio 18" ========================> #uclslade 4 Casting #summerschool2026 with the brilliant @jo.guile
Arrow add for me by studio assistant + TODAY +i addition a sticking plaster by me DAVID ERIC FOWELL age 69 AND 10 MONTHS #nevertolate to start anything you want

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*LAST WEEK OF THE ARTIST'S FRAME*
Closing event on Saturday 5-7pm, with Robert Good's Shutterbug experience!

Pictured here is the sculpture Intrusive Thoughts by Jacob Sirkin.

Intrusive Thoughts is made from scrap framing timber and offcuts of glass and acrylic. A concealed light sits at its centre, visible through a shifting arrangement of transparent and reflective fragments.

The composition of glass is never fixed. Each time the work is installed, the pieces are balanced into a new configuration, introducing a degree of uncertainty. Part sculpture, part image and part frame, the work grows out of an ongoing interest in framing not only as a practical trade, but as a way of thinking about how things are presented and given meaning.

Jacob Sirkin (b. 2000) is an installation artist based in London. Materials are often reused and reconfigured across different projects, forming a loop of making, disassembly, and re-purposing. This ongoing cycle embeds each work with traces of past use and accumulated history.

He graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2024 with a BA in Fine Art, having completed the Diploma in Professional Studies in 2022-23. He co-founded and produced the Tellus Triannual (2023–2025). Recent group shows include Metropolis (Greatorex Street, London, 2025) and A Room That Remembers You Back (Warbling, London, 2026).

Intrusive Thoughts
wood, acrylic, glass, paint, LED
55 x 30 x 20 cm (approx) 2025

Installation images by Cesare De Giglio @cesare_dg here featuring works by Anouk Lazarek Munster, Emma Lilly, April Virgoe, Jacob Sirkin, Paul Westcombe, Archie Franks, Sol Golden-Sato, Nigel Grimmer, Virginia Verran, Carolyn Blake

Exhibition finishes on Saturday 25 July
Gallery hours Thurs-Sat 2-6pm

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