What Cannot Be Contained is a group exhibition which offers different propositions towards an understanding of contemporary painting.

The exhibition places its focus on the enduring appeal of the materiality of paint, through the work of three artists who use painting as their primary medium or as a central part of their practice. Prioritising the very act of painting and the nature of paint itself, it can be said the works within What Cannot Be Contained speak as much of ‘painting’ as they do of ‘painters’.

The use of abstraction weaves between the artists’ works, with gestural, physical, performative and perceptual concerns all pronounced. From spirited and generous uses of colour, texture and layering, sculptural properties emerge. The painted works explore the possibilities and restrictions of the canvas or surface, where edges both confront and contain paint, shifting the emphasis towards the technical and material parameters of the painterly process. For Footitt and Price, this extends to an interest in a choreographed installation of their work, which further resists traditional approaches to reading painting.

How do these artists expand or distil notions of contemporary painting? This exhibition aims to resist foreclosing any possibilities, instead choosing to offer painting as a medium that materially, physically and theoretically, thrives when it is not contained.