Artist: Marianne Thoermer

Canopy Collections presents ‘The Periphery’, a solo show of new works by Marianne Thoermer (b. 1987, Germany). This is the artist’s first solo show in the UK.

With a classical training in painting, Marianne Thoermer is known for a practice that blends traditional techniques with an unconventional use of material. Since graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 2018, her work has involved a wide range of media, including painting, ceramics and large-scale textile installations. More recently, Thoermer has returned to painting as her primary medium, which she describes as ‘the most intuitive and natural way of navigating the world’.

In The Periphery, Thoermer explores the notion of the edge — spatial, social and psychological — to reflect on what exists beyond the centre and within the quiet spaces that unfold at the margins of perception. The paintings on display, all created during the artist’s maternity leave, emerged from a period of stillness and close observation, when her gaze turned towards the subtle choreography of daily life. They depict mundane objects such as pots, dishes and chairs, while capturing the repetition in everyday gestures. Contrasting the static nature of traditional still life painting, these works carry a tangible sense of movement where the actions of stacking, holding, and arranging become part of a visually captivating humdrum routine.

While most of the works in the show find their origin in the poetics of everyday life, they also act as metaphors to reflect on how identity is shaped and experienced. Anchored in an exploration of the interplay between imagination and reality, two works in particular reach beyond the quotidian. The Arrangement is based on an archival photograph taken at the nursery of Askham Grange prison, a women’s open prison in Yorkshire where mothers are allowed to live with their babies. In this work, we see staff members carefully setting the children’s tables with flowers, cups and plates. Here, Thoermer explores the cyclical nature of labour, and the relationship between care and confinement. In The Forest, the artist’s focus takes us into an exterior realm, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, light and shadow, presence and absence. A place often associated with hidden fears and desires, The Forest symbolises the unconscious mind.

Thoermer’s paintings reveal the medium’s ability to connect us with hidden aspects of our psyches. Her works carry a raw honesty, touching what lies just beyond the familiar, at once comforting and disquieting. Charged with both tenderness and unease, her compositions become sites through which to examine the tension that hums beneath everyday life.

Marianne Thoermer studied at the Berlin Weissensee School of Art, Germany and Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. She graduated with a MA from the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2018. Having spent the last six years in Berlin, she now lives and works in Holmfirth, Yorkshire. Her work is held in international collections including Goetz Collection, Munich and Haus N Collection, Kiel and Athens, as well as private collections in the UK, the USA, Germany and Sweden. She has exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Frestonian Gallery, London; Canopy Collections, London; TJ Boulting, London; Positions Berlin Art Fair; Galerie Sechzig, Austria; Museum Rijswijk, The Netherlands.