Showing at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Michael Wilkinson’s new body of work develops his interest in still-life painting – its relationship to transience and its traditional engagement with trickery and humour through the use of ‘trompe l’oeil’.

To produce his paintings, Wilkinson photographed a series of flowers in vases set before blank linen framed in aluminium. These images provided the basis for the paintings, with the linen in the photographs being ‘represented’ by areas of actual blank linen. The material functions both materially and figuratively, being both the thing itself and its representation. The finished works are also framed in the same style of plain aluminium frame recorded in the paintings. Wilkinson uses a technique he describes as fluorochiaroscuro, with fluorescent colours emphasising the effect of light falling on the various subjects, a heightened effect which produces a kind of ‘psychedelic realism’.

Also showing are Julia Chiang: Secret Smile at the Institute’s Aird’s Lane space and Kim Fisher: Roots and Tourist at its Aird’s Lane Bricks space.