Details

First Name	Graham
Last Name	Lister
Username	lister_art
Website	http://www.grahamlisterart.com
Region	Greater Glasgow
Disciplines	Drawing, Painting, Sculpture
Themes	Abstract, Environment, Geometric

Statement

A painter based in Glasgow, Scotland, Graham Lister is equally interested in pushing pigment on a surface, running a stick along a line of railings and repeatedly folding a roll of paper. His work focuses on barrier materials, paintings-as-barriers or as reflections on ways to split up or comment upon encounters with, and in, space. Questions regarding existing inside or outside a space, of being part of something or not, and relating to distance and proximity within expanded painting practices regularly feature in his work.
Motivated by the beautiful simplicity which painting can have, and by the maddening difficulty which is equally present he seeks to ‘think through making’. In recent years, throughout exhibitions nationally and internationally, he has looked to develop numerous series of structured gestural works which embrace, repetitive mark-making and disassembling processes. Through these, issues related to how of spaces are organised and how different surfaces transmit complex messages come to the fore. Overall, his work is an ongoing attempt to use painting to tease out new ways of seeing the world.

Biography

Graham Lister (b.1982) is a painter and researcher based in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2016, he completed a Practice-based PhD at the Glasgow School of Art.

His ongoing practice is concerned with using the activity of painting as a way of thinking about contemporary physical experiences. His work encompasses gradual abstraction processes which showcase investigations of the visual codes and surface materialities which often go unnoticed within our everyday lives. Ideas connected to how the painting studio is used, and how painted explorations of surface textures, materials and repeated mark-making processes can be positioned in new and interesting ways form the core of his practice-based research activities.

His paintings have been shown in a large number of group exhibitions nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions also taking place in recent years in Manchester, Glasgow and Berlin.

Prior to his PhD at the GSA, he studied at Gray’s School of Art, studying on the MFA programme, and at the University of Glasgow, gaining an MA(Hons) in Art History. He worked at the GSA from 2008 – 2015 (Historical and Critical Studies and Painting and Printmaking), and then at the University of Huddersfield 2015 – 2017 (Contemporary Art).

Returning to Glasgow in 2017, he has worked as a Lecturer in Painting and Printmaking and as a Tutor for the Widening Participation programme at the GSA. He is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.