The Power of the Invisible and the Rebellion of Repetition: Caragh Thuring at Thomas Dane Gallery

Much of the world escapes our gaze; it exists behind closed doors, in the depths of the ocean, in the folds of our minds, or in the invisible void of digital networks. Painting is precisely such an art of concealing and revealing. Just as a song draws strength from the silence between notes, a good canvas begins to speak where the paint ends.

With its solo exhibition of Caragh Thuring, open until September 19, 2026, London’s Thomas Dane Gallery confronts the viewer with exactly this aesthetic of “invisibility and restraint.” The exhibition whispers that the unrevealed is at least as heavy and laden with meaning as what lies right before our eyes.

Traces of Holy Loch: The Ghostly Submarines

The roots of the uncanny atmosphere in Thuring’s paintings actually stretch back to the geography of her own childhood. Growing up in Scotland’s Holy Loch region—surrounded by green, serene hills—the artist spent her childhood watching US nuclear submarines suddenly breach the water’s surface like colossal monsters in the middle of peaceful landscapes.

The childhood shock generated by these massive, menacing, yet absurd metal hulls forms the strongest backbone of her paintings. On the artist’s canvas, these submarines appear sometimes as phallic symbols of power, sometimes as minimalist brick structures observed by time travelers, and sometimes as eerie shadows cast over tartan patterns. Reducing them to a single function is impossible; they constantly change shape, just like the act of painting itself.

The Volcano Lover and Sensory Painting

Curiosity about the explosive power lying beneath the hidden inevitably drives Thuring toward the ancient nature of volcanoes. Much like submarines, volcanoes—which appear completely dormant and harmless until they erupt—serve as powerful metaphors in the artist’s mind.

In her portrait series inspired by Susan Sontag’s famous historical novel The Volcano Lover, one finds the stirring traces of passionate lovers like Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton, alongside the legendary French volcanologist couple Katia and Maurice Krafft, who perished side by side during an eruption in 1991. Thuring’s brush echoes the famous thesis in Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation”: do not try to decode a painting solely with the mind and reduce it to a single meaning; feel it with your senses and your body as well.

Bending Time: From The Annunciation to Starlink

The new works slowly blooming in Thuring’s studio and featured in this exhibition prove how masterfully the artist bends our perception of time. As she piles images in layers, she mixes centuries, hours, and days.

For instance, in the painting “World Trade,” industrial pipes erupting from a concrete floor symbolize a makeshift creativity born out of necessity; in “The Annunciation,” saints, ghosts, and lilies obscuring faces melt into a hallucinatory chaos. The exhibition’s most sci-fi-tinted piece, “Starlink,” depicts the satellites launched into orbit by Elon Musk as a shimmering cosmic ring, while confronting us with humanity’s desperate yet stubborn optimism through a tiny rocket launched into the sky from the darkness.

The Philosophy of Repetition and Empty Spaces

The artist’s technical practices also provide a wonderful playground that supports this layered narrative. Working with fast, bold, and block colors, Thuring sometimes paints directly onto custom-woven patterned fabrics; at other times, she leaves large portions of the linen canvas completely bare and unpainted.

Just like those meaningful silences in a lively conversation, these empty spaces on the canvas offer the viewer a pause to breathe and think. In her world, repetition is a philosophical refuge rather than a boring routine. Like an ancient pot of stew that simmers every day, its flavor multiplying as new ingredients are added, bricks, clouds, ropes, and military aircraft constantly return to Thuring’s brush, rediscovered every single time.

NO-26 Editor’s Art Route Note

If you find yourself in London before mid-September, this exhibition in the St James’s district promises a wonderful double bill. Caragh Thuring’s dreamlike show at Thomas Dane Gallery runs concurrently with Prunella Clough’s late works exhibited just a block away at 11 Duke Street.

Watching how these two powerful women artists converse with forms, empty spaces, and ways of seeing the world in fragments back-to-back will be one of the most refined visual rewards you can give yourself in London this season. Don’t miss it!