Geri Loup Nolan is returning to exhibit at Thomas Tosh ten years after her last solo show and residency at the Thornhill venue. Geri’s specially curated winter exhibition shows how she has refined her style, in part as a result of her artistic travels in China and Japan.
Geri says: “Over these last 10 years my work has become more pared down and the alchemy of collaborating directly with nature has become more pronounced.
“This can see me directly exposing work to rainfall, or mixing my own colours using local richly pigmented soils, pot ash and charcoal.
“Similarly locating the beauty in the found object, humble and discarded materials, always appeal to me and I rarely have difficulty locating them on my travels. They usually find me!”
The Edinburgh College of Art graduate was recognised as a New Contemporary by the Royal Scottish Academy in 2011, and Geri has been a recipient of development awards from the City of Edinburgh Council, Creative Scotland, and the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust.
In 2014 Geri was invited to be part of the National Galleries of Scotland’s Generation exhibitions, its major celebration of contemporary art in Scotland.
She has exhibited in Hokkaido and Tokyo, and Zhanjiang and Shenzhen in China where she was undertook artistic residencies. In Europe, she has exhibited in major galleries in Edinburgh, Dublin, London, Nuremberg, Taranto & Lecce in Italy.
Geri explains: “The time I spent in Japan and China was extremely varied and culturally immersive, but I honed down those experiences for the work I created. In China I was staying at Longtoumo Village in rural Zhanjiang. I was surrounded by tropical plantations, shellfish farming and sugar cane and banana fields. The soil was very richly pigmented and I made work that responded deeply to the interaction of the people, the ritual, the earth.”
