Carol Rhodes: Seen and Unseen

Carol Rhodes: Seen and Unseen
6 April – 23 April 2024
Reid Ground Floor Corridor

This presentation accompanies a one-day symposium on the work of the painter Carol Rhodes (1959-2018). This symposium is co-ordinated by GSA School of Fine Art and GSA Exhibitions, in conjunction with the estate of Carol Rhodes. 

Known for her depictions of landscape, Rhodes portrayed a world of semi-fictional locations that are at once familiar and ambiguous. Intimately scaled, densely rendered and typically taking an aerial viewpoint, her works often feature uninhabited industrial terrains and edgelands – factories, canals, motorways, reservoirs – described by the artist as ‘hidden areas’. This presentation explores a small selection of early works and drawings from Rhodes’s archive. 

Rhodes studied at Glasgow School of Art (1977-82) but, following her graduation, became involved in social activism, organising and participating in feminist, pacifist, gay rights and social justice campaigns. She co-founded the Glasgow Free University (related items have been selected for this presentation by Dr. Paul Pieroni, a Carol Rhodes bursary holder) and between 1986 and 1988 was part of a burgeoning group of artists associated with the artist-led Transmission Gallery. From 1999 onwards, she returned to Glasgow School of Art as a tutor. In 2012, along with Merlin James, she founded the gallery space 42 Carlton Place in Glasgow.  

The presentation also includes work by Sin Park, another of the Carol Rhodes bursary holders linked with the symposium. Park has selected items from Rhodes’s studio. 

Carol Rhodes (1959-2018) was born in Edinburgh and brought up in Bengal, India. She studied at Glasgow School of Art (1977-82) and during the 1980s she was actively involved in the Women’s Movement, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow and the Glasgow Free University. At this time she made little art, but resumed painting in 1990 and started to exhibit her work in 1994. In 2012, with partner Merlin James, she set up an exhibition space in their home/studio at 42 Carlton Place, Glasgow where she co-curated exhibitions of work by, among others, Christina Ramberg, Adrian Morris and Louis Michel Eilshemius. She was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2013 and died in 2018.

With thanks to Carol Rhodes estate.

Image: ‘Open Tent‘, Carol Rhodes (1994). Oil on board, 54 x 64 cm.
Private collection. Courtesy: Carol Rhodes estate and Alison Jacques, London.