Poetic Memory of the Mundane: Prunella Clough’s “Out and About” Exhibition at Thomas Dane Gallery
Think about the things we walk past and ignore in the hustle and bustle of daily life: a shop awning, stacked plastic buckets, rebar, or a dilapidated fence on a street corner… These details, which are nothing more than worthless visual noise to most of us, were priceless treasures to Prunella Clough (1919–1999), one of the sharpest-eyed figures of British painting.
With the exhibition titled “Out and About,” curated by Jenni Lomax, London’s Thomas Dane Gallery (11 Duke Street) brings together seventeen unique paintings by the artist dating from the 1980s and 1990s. On view until July 25, 2026, this selection demonstrates what it means to look at the world of objects with honesty, subtlety, and a rebellious spirit nourished by the mundane.
Clough was literally an artist who lived through her eyes. Instead of seeking refuge in romantic rural landscapes or picturesque nature spots for inspiration, she preferred the battered, gray aesthetic of industry, working-class coastal towns, and suburban fringes. On these exploratory trips, she would photograph shop windows, bright plastic containers, factory chimneys, and pavements with her “un-grand” camera, as she called it. These photos were not meant to be exhibited; they were raw snapshots taken to feed the vast visual dictionary in the artist’s mind. Clough would sometimes write down what she saw in small, neat handwriting on a piece of paper or the back of an envelope:
“…a dark man on a white towel, by pale green poles, on neutral sand, by a white boat…”
Intimate and Obsessive: Discoveries from the Archive
The details unearthed from Clough’s archive at Tate Britain by the exhibition’s curator, Jenni Lomax, prove how intimate and obsessive the artist’s creative process was. In Clough’s world, there was no boundary between home and studio, life and paint. Even on her shopping lists, words appearing side by side like “fish, cadmium yellow, wine…” offer wonderful clues into how her mind worked.
Abstract forms salvaged and cut out from “failed” canvases found in archive boxes, cardboard stencils, handmade color charts, and dried twigs show that the free and uncanny language in her paintings was not accidental, but meticulously constructed from the debris of everyday life.
Independent Organisms on the Gallery Walls
Refusing to fit into rigid categories like abstract or figurative, Prunella Clough’s paintings breathe on the gallery walls like independent organisms with their own internal logic. Lines layered with the harsh, brutalist textures of urban life quietly collide with the organic forms of nature on the canvas.
While possessing a fragile beauty, these paintings also harbor a sharp, rebellious spirit that unsettles the viewer. Clough does not crudely heap paint onto the canvas; on the contrary, she pulls her brush back, leaving parts of the linen fabric completely bare. Like those deep, meaningful pauses in a lively conversation, these empty spaces on the canvas open up a space for the viewer to think, to feel, and most importantly, to see.
NO-26 Editor’s Art Route Note
This exhibition is a very elegant continuation of the “Push Me, Pull You” exhibition curated by Jenni Lomax in Naples in May 2025, which placed Prunella Clough alongside contemporary painters including Caragh Thuring. After watching Clough’s quiet show distilled from the mundane in Thomas Dane Gallery’s space at 11 Duke Street, you should head right across the street to 3 Duke Street to engage with the dialogue Caragh Thuring builds with her uncanny submarines and exploding volcanoes.
Discovering the secret kinship in how these two powerful women across generations see the world in fragments and reconstruct it through paint will be the most satisfying aesthetic itinerary you can experience in London this summer.
