France-Lise McGurn
In late summer, we will present a major new exhibition by Scottish artist France-Lise McGurn. McGurn studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) and this exhibition marks the first time her work has been exhibited in Dundee. In what she describes as ‘painting installation’, McGurn creates gestural and fluid works that express facets of human experience including connection, separation, pleasure and loss.
McGurn's rhythmic, hand-drawn lines recall various states of living and communion; clubbing, family life, sex, sobriety, abandon, pop culture, cartoons and advertising all creep into the work fleetingly as they do on audiences’ own visual and emotional registers.
Across both galleries at DCA, McGurn’s expansive paintings will spill out from canvases directly onto the walls and floors. Painted and printed antique and obsolete furniture carefully sourced by the artist, including bespoke seating and rugs for visitors to sit and walk on, will aim to disrupt the preciousness of the fine art context within the museum, encouraging a more intimate relationship to the work. New large-scale collages on printed canvas will bring elements of the artist’s reference archive into the space, becoming part of the installation and toying with the familiar to evoke and recall both the artist and audience’s latent and lived individual experiences.
About France-Lise McGurn
France-Lise McGurn was born 1983, in Glasgow. She lives and works between London and Glasgow. She studied for her BA at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee in 2005, her MA in London at the Royal College of Art, London and her MA in painting Exchange at Hunter College of Art, New York in 2012.
McGurn predominantly works with painting to create layered installations that incorporate the gallery walls, floors and ceilings. Her calligraphic brushstrokes are made intuitively and swiftly, prioritising rhythm and movement which convey a relationship to themes of intimacy, ecstasy and memory.
She works indirectly from a collected archive of imagery which forms the shapes, lines and shorthand that spill across canvases and surfaces. These collected materials form the body of her own research and include celebrity autographs, classical sculpture, photography, women’s magazines, 70s film, advertisements, flyers, figurines, found objects and furniture.
Selected solo exhibitions include: Strawberry, MASSIMODECARLO, London (2024); What Everyone Wants, The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2024); Studio Voltaire, London (2023); Aloud, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museums, Glasgow (2022); In Emotia, Tramway, Glasgow (2020); Bodytronic, Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel (2020) and Sleepless, Tate Britain, London (2019).
Her forthcoming solo exhibition Bad TV opens at MASSIMODECARLO Hong Kong on 19 November 2025. Her installation Hysteric Grammar is on view as part of Winter Light at Southbank Centre, London from 1 November 2025 - 18 January 2026.
France-Lise McGurn is represented by MassimodeCarlo, London and The Modern Institute, Glasgow.