Slip Across These Planes – Julia McKinlay

‘Slip Across These Planes’ is a solo presentation of works by Leeds based artist and Fine Art Lecturer Julia McKinlay.

Julia McKinlay’s practice is a process of discovering a language of sculptural forms. Her work explores the boundaries of the human made in relation to organic and lithic matter. McKinlay’s practice is spatial, she is interested in how objects and images interact in space and form connections with the viewer, sometimes creating imagined worlds for the viewer to explore.

For McKinlay’s solo presentation at Hyde Park Art Club, work shifts away from external subject matter towards capturing specific shapes colours and forms that linger in the artists mind. McKinlay describes these forms as ‘a language specific to my practice and my way of processing of the world as I experience it, a conglomeration of moments concretised into something solid’.

This new collection of bold printed and drawn matter responds to materials and offers a bodily utterance that can be felt as well as seen. An embodied articulation of McKinlay’s inner visual language which, seeks to interact and form further connections with the viewer and the space in which they are presented.

“In ‘Slip Across These Planes’ I am presenting a group of new drawings and prints, working principally with paper, pigments and sheet material to explore shape, surface, weight and colour. The artworks will explore the narrow spatial field of flat materials and how they can be cut, embossed, incised and polished into something that feels absolute.”

About Julia McKinlay

Julia McKinlay’s practice spans sculpture, drawing and print. McKinlay graduated from BA Fine Art: Sculpture and Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art in 2009, and MFA Fine Art Sculpture at The Slade School of Fine Art in 2014. She completed her PhD by practice at Leeds Beckett University with Yorkshire Sculpture International in 2021.

In 2021, McKinlay founded and curated Threshold, an open-air gallery for exhibitions of sculpture in Leeds. She has participated in residencies at AIR 3331, Tokyo; MI-LAB, Lake Kawaguchiko; METAL, Southend-on-Sea; Joya: arte + ecologia, Spain; Listhus, Iceland; Skaftfell, Iceland and has shown extensively nationally and internationally.

She joined the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies as a Lecturer in Fine Art in 2022.

 

Opening event

The exhibition opens on Tuesday 17 January (6.30 to 9pm) with a private view and artist in conversation with Julia McKinlay and Hyde Park Art Club curator Marion Harrison, plus a set by DJ Speed Bump.

Book your place via Eventbrite.

Venue

Hyde Park Book Club
27-29 Headingley Lane
Headingley
Leeds LS6 1BL

Feature image

Image courtesy of Julia McKinlay.