TREVOR SUTTON - Hidden Architecture
26 September – 18 October 2025
Trevor Sutton was born in 1948. He is a painter / printmaker, living and working in London, UK. He was a Senior Lecturer at Chelsea College of Art and Design from 1973 until 2000 and a Research Fellow there from 2000 - 2003. In 2012 he was Artist in Residence at Kunstgarten, Graz, Austria and is a Returning Fellow at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in County Mayo, Ireland since 2000. Recent solo exhibitions include Katsura Imperial Villa at AIS/Concept Space in Shibukawa, Japan, Blue Lightning at Cairn Gallery, Fife, Small World at Zuleika Gallery, Woodstock. He has published three books in recent years, Irish Paintings, French Paintingsand Katsura Imperial Villa, all with Peter Foolen Editions in the Netherlands. He has work in collections worldwide, including Tate London, British Council, Arts Council England, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Government Art Collection, Sainsbury Centre UEA, Pallant House Chichester, Ballinglen Museum of Art Ireland, Artothèque de Limousin France, Cleveland Museum of Art Ohio and Ackland Art Museum, USA.
HIDDEN ARCHITECTURE refers initially to nine collages of the same title made by Trevor Sutton on a residency in Alayrac, Midi Pyrenees in September 2024; the last of his six working residencies there between 2008 – 2024, thanks to the generosity and vision of a private benefactor. The strong colour, light, ambiance and perhaps most importantly, the scale of the huge ancient church-like studio there has had an enduring effect upon him. In the centre of this high ceilinged stone-walled studio stretches an eight metre long oak table where he made the collages. The light and shadow in this beautiful space, with its tiled floors and tall windows inspired Sutton with myriad visual possibilities. A 9 minute film is showing in the shed, documenting Sutton’s six projects made there.
Conversely, upon his return to London he immediately embarked on a large diptych, also titled Hidden Architecture, 63.5 x 254cm, completed at the end of 2024. The colours of this painting refer more to the landscape and architecture of surrounding towns and villages, with their old stone walls, their terracotta rooftops and painted façades. So too do two other paintings in this exhibition, an equilateral triangle painting titled Close Up 2025 and an isosceles triangle, Detail 2025. The triangles zoom in on small individual details, curiously cropped by their format, like looking through a telescopic lens. This triangular format is not new for Sutton; he first made triangle paintings in the 1960’s but has revived the form in the past five years or so. Two further precursors are included here, both collages, Diamond 1 and 2, made on a separate residency in Ireland earlier in 2024.
