I Suppose in a Dream: Carole Gibbons and Luke Samuel | 23 April - 21 May 2022

I Suppose in a Dream
Carole Gibbons and Luke Samuel
I Suppose in a Dream is a visual dialogue between artists Carole Gibbons (b.1935, Glasgow) and Luke Samuel (b.1992, Cardiff), who are born nearly sixty years apart, yet united by their mutual choice of painting as a medium and an investigation into pictorial space.

The notions of interior and exterior are usually regarded as strictly divided, almost as the “dialectics of yes and no.”¹ Both artists are interested in these thresholds: Samuel by blending the boundary between the two visually, and Gibbons by merging the internal landscape of her psyche with the external landscape of her surrounding environment.

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¹ Gaston Bachelard’s ‘Poetics of Space’
Installation views

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Carole Gibbons, Untitled (Large Still Life)

Gibbons’ early works are mythological, and even as her interest shifts to domestic narratives later in her career (the paintings in this exhibition represent the later phase), the same motifs and objects reappear throughout her practice.² Interestingly, all of Gibbons’ works featured in I Suppose in a Dream revolve around two main pieces of imagery; the broken vase and the stone head. These objects, which have a personal meaning to the artist, have been present in her work for over 50 years, from the 1980s to present day.

² Debi Banerjee’s ‘Waiting Figure in a Landscape: The Painting of Carole Gibbons’
Luke Samuel, Untitled (Daylight)

Similarly to how Gibbons has a set of recurring visual motifs, Samuel works on recurring shapes and compositions. He often works on many paintings simultaneously and motifs build up as he is going along. This process allows Samuel to develop and redefine similar compositions, and often one painting helps him solve another work. When talking about the artist’s way of working, it is important to note the scale of most of the paintings featured in the exhibition. The small size of the canvases is important, as the scale dictates the forms and leads the compositions.
The idea of recurrence in both Gibbons and Samuel’s practices goes beyond form and subject matter. Adriana Francisco explores this theme further, exploring time and memory in relation to both artists’ works, in the text I Suppose in a Dream (click here to read the full text), which accompanies the exhibition.
About the artists

Carole Gibbons is a painter born (1935) in Glasgow, where she still lives and paints. She studied at Glasgow School of Art 1953-58, where her contemporaries Alan Fletcher, Douglas Abercrombie and Alasdair Gray had a profound influence on her career.

She has had several retrospectives in Scotland and her work is held in many public collections including the National Galleries Scotland, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Glasgow Museums, yet she remains largely unknown outside of Glasgow.
- Carole Gibbons, Head, shell, vase and fruits, 2012
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- Carole Gibbons, Still life (Moroccan vase and green jug), 1992
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Luke Samuel, born 1992 in Cardiff, lives and works in London. Luke received his BA (Hons) Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is currently enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools (2018 - 2022).

Selected group exhibitions include: Alt Freunde, Neue Freunde, Claas Reiss, (2021); Companions, Union Pacific, (2021); Glass Houses, Mcbeans Orchid Nursery, (2020); No Time Like the Present, Public Gallery, London (2020); Premiums, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2020); LANDGRAB, The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2020), Summer Exhibition 2017; The Royal Academy of Arts, London (2017); The Painter-Stainers Prize 2016, Guildford House Gallery, Guildford (2016).