Have you ever wanted to see the world anew through the eyes of a child? To see every object and landscape as a brand new form? Glasgow-based artist Hayley Tompkins can show you how. Her ironically named show Far looks at things close up or in part andmakes them appear entirely different. Film screens flicker through obscured shots of everyday items – bread, old mobile phones, magazines, cables – while chairs, paper bags and shirts are drenched in paint, transforming them in the process.
Tompkins encourages attentive viewing. In the downstairs gallery, the painted chairs are objects to be sat on, and the five video works are presented on small screens. Produced between 2007 and 2022, the films are blurry, jumbled and taken from the angles you might expect a toddler to shoot were they given access to a phone. As the images chop and change, a captivating purpose and pattern emerges. A fuzzy, glowing item suddenly becomes the welcome screen of an old Nokia phone; a snippet of text starts to reveal a magazine article; a staircase leads to a row of glowing windows.
