THE PROBLEM WITH PEOPLE

The Problem with People is an exhibition of 18 painters, focusing on different ways that artists deal with the figure in painting today. The somewhat provocative title refers to the difficulties and challenges often associated with the figure in painting, both in a literal or representational sense, but also in philosophical, ethical and material terms. 

The idea of (the) painting – which is not a ‘person’ – performs as a kind of surrogate or stand in for the body. This enables artists to see and re-see themselves through painting, be it through locating the figure inside pictorial space, emphasising the figure beyond the stretcher, notions of the figure with or without a body, the figure as gesture, a shape, a place, an outline, an anthropomorphic object, or through material itself. 

Curated by @keithashcroft 

Oceans Apart

24-26 King St

Salford

M3 7DG 

#theproblemwithpeople 

This talk took place at the closing event for ‘Parties’, my exhibition at Rogue Project Space in 2025.

I’m delighted to have been selected for the John Moores Painting Prize 2025. The exhibition opens in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool on Saturday September 6th and continues until Sunday March 1st 2026.

For the last week of the exhibition, July 21-25, Parties will be open each day from Monday to Friday between midday and 5pm.

Closing event Saturday July 26 from 2-5pm.

Artist’s Talk 3pm

Otto’s Big Couch Challenge 4pm

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An exhibition by David Gledhill

June 14 – July 27 2025

Project Space

Rogue Artists’ Studios CIC

4 Barrass Street

Higher Openshaw

Manchester

M11 1PU

Private View Saturday June 14, 2-5pm

Closing event Saturday July 26, 2-5pm

Exhibition open Fridays and Saturdays 12-5pm and at other times by appointment.

According to the aphorism, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’*. However, one word with  contemporary resonance has multiple meanings and suggests unlimited visual manifestations. At a time when words and their usage are more fiercely debated than ever, this project explores some of the visual dimensions of one of the most compendious and controversial terms of all. From family celebrations to political associations, Parties evokes a range of phenomena that may have purely recreational, or alternatively, world changing significance.

Parties brings the domestic shindig, Christmas, wedding, fancy dress and work bashes together with political visual culture to explore the extraordinary range of images that language can evoke. Combining paintings based on amateur photographic source material with artefacts and objects drawn from the artist’s own collection of vintage propaganda material, Parties takes a historical perspective on the power of the word to shape our lives.

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*Attributed to Frederick R. Barnard. First appeared in Printer’s Ink in December 1921.