![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Bed-detail002_66042_3sec.gif?w=960&h=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676470985&s=9b5e1e20c643a48bdf2e443cc3a6cbb8 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Bed-detail002_66042_3sec.gif?w=1280&h=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676470985&s=dbe0c93313461a822030d4e8dbc6df29 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Bed-detail002_66042_3sec.gif?w=1600&h=1200&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676470985&s=43a6d5f887d5a165f676915b150ad0d3 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Bed-detail002_66042_3sec.gif?w=2222.6666666667&h=1667&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676470985&s=9c76a5b582181ccd666f4e5e12d27505 2222w)
Introductions | Margaux Williamson
Introductions | Margaux Williamson
2021年3月19日-5月11日
Margaux Williamson’s practice centres on painting but incorporates books, text and film projects, often in ways that connect and inform each other.
Her figurative paintings frequently begin with writing, a way of sketching with words that offers an unconventional path to pictorial themes, accessing what she has termed the ‘natural order of your random imagination.’
‘Introductions | Margaux Williamson’ is curated by Capucine Perrot, Associate Director, Artist Liaison.
Focusing on the quotidian – the unremarkable scenes and landscapes of contemporary, everyday life – her paintings depict recognisable subjects, skewed through an intuitive and collaged vision. The corner of a domestic setting, an urban front door or the dark interior of a bar, all point to the already ‘seen’ but are rendered in a way which disrupts coherent visual order and any linear path towards meaning.
Margaux Williamson
Cup, 2021
![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Cup-detail004_6634.jpg?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5118&fp-y=0.3014&dm=1676470985&s=e9ec0095ac8e22f3c0ed40e206d82f9d 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Cup-detail004_6634.jpg?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5118&fp-y=0.3014&dm=1676470985&s=42c1baf3d994bfd1ebb904ad2be10a86 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Cup-detail004_6634.jpg?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5118&fp-y=0.3014&dm=1676470985&s=36b5abdfa24c492c6da055438ce3e6b0 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Cup-detail004_6634.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5118&fp-y=0.3014&dm=1676470985&s=e94d43e10930a5cec6256e3d0d863569 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Cup-detail004_6634.jpg?w=2360&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5118&fp-y=0.3014&dm=1676470985&s=5bfcf5e63e3892bcb8261693fd8322a0 2360w)
Williamson builds her compositions from distinct, constituent parts, combined to form unexpected resolutions. Qualities of light and degrees of luminosity can change across the canvas surface, suggesting an indeterminate time or place. By painting one scene in a particular condition of light or time of day and then adding to it with an altogether different mood, she attempts to inscribe time through paint. ‘I had always loved paintings, as they could provide more space, but how great to see that they could also provide more time,’ she has remarked. Creating a sense of detachment, this process of ‘construction and rearrangement’ shifts the painting away from pure figuration and towards a state of near-abstraction.
Margaux Williamson
Front Door, 2021
Front Door (2021) features a typical type of North American vernacular architecture; a glass-sectioned wooden door and scrubby patch of garden, in various shades of beige and brown. The feeling of urban decay is emphasised by the inclusion of several discarded bottles, papers and old books and a mound of dry leaves – tactile, almost audible – illuminated by a direct source of light hidden from view. The overall neutral tone of the image is relieved by an incongruent patch of brightly coloured flowers in various states of bloom. A perfectly erect red poppy, a short but monstrous sunflower, weed trees, sweet peas and an iris stand above a tiny patch of putrid-green lawn, as if Williamson is overlaying another image, something that isn’t but could be there.
![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Frontdoor-detail001_6582.jpg?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477574&s=ba95ea4441ab04b55d74fe81ee867943 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Frontdoor-detail001_6582.jpg?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477574&s=a7d5747ce63d92d60cb985d5d539f61c 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Frontdoor-detail001_6582.jpg?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477574&s=fbdb3fe950d0d48e997b2148109dab01 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Frontdoor-detail001_6582.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477574&s=58f57ae739c33f6c7a60fa7e38733dfb 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Frontdoor-detail001_6582.jpg?w=2360&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477574&s=9f067166b877e9d2a0016b6b89d5c4b1 2360w)
Margaux Williamson
Pool, 2021
As with many of Williamson's paintings, the potential for narrative is emphatically present, yet visually excluded from the composition. A sense of incidence, past, future or present, yet outside of our field of vision, along with switches in scale and perspective all contribute to the surreal, hybrid composition.
![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Pool-detail002_6756-4.jpg?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477568&s=b33142497551d788684f02cda7fe9c3a 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Pool-detail002_6756-4.jpg?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477568&s=733c4780202cbd177e218b57cd8634db 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Pool-detail002_6756-4.jpg?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477568&s=26c0cf71afbffa444f0597145f675776 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Pool-detail002_6756-4.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477568&s=9f6f4e67b9eb6b84d83af9df8f83a236 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Pool-detail002_6756-4.jpg?w=2360&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477568&s=af1a6748971707261e268504c1480624 2360w)
‘The paintings are always a little ahead of me, especially the deeper I am in my craft, the more lost I can get. It seems to make the work a bit more surprising and it is good, as the maker, to be surprised.’
Margaux Williamson
Fire, 2021
Fire (2021) began not with its titular subject, but with two folding chairs with pale blue seats; objects in the artist's own possession and used for guests when they gather around the fire outside her studio. Added at a later date, the fire is a ball of flame at the painting’s centre, composed from a number of abstract gestures, resolving and dissolving.
![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Fire-Detail003_6692.jpg?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477562&s=c2fd912bf39723d44e93ef863330243e 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Fire-Detail003_6692.jpg?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477562&s=abf488018c81e50a1282913fa9bad266 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Fire-Detail003_6692.jpg?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477562&s=02c3b8397dcebe9f85de4f6d049a98b1 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Fire-Detail003_6692.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477562&s=58a5d12dedb7f1301d75f30ef82c1201 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Fire-Detail003_6692.jpg?w=2360&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477562&s=867c8c445bb08453a17710da9ed26d82 2360w)
Margaux Williamson
Bed, 2021
Abrupt changes in spatial and textural treatment and uneasy object relationships characterise Bed (2021). This intimate mise-en-scène depicts an un-made bed, chair, shelving and an array of items including books and a mobile phone. Williamson’s rendering of her subject matter alternates between acute detail and dissolving liquidity, promoting a sense of something in flux or ungrounded. A floor lamp merges into the wall behind it, and bookshelf and chair are pushed a little too close to the bed, which itself appears almost upright. In the painting’s foreground, a patterned carpet seems flattened out, its motifs hovering and separated from their plush background and a mysterious black object, possibly a small heater, sits resolutely in the centre.
Margaux Williamson
Kitchen, 2021
![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Kitchen-detail001_6701.jpg?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1677178680&s=d33e036391eb88d55922b45fe5c6dcb8 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Kitchen-detail001_6701.jpg?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1677178680&s=aa53af198f59effee5ae467dbb032453 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Kitchen-detail001_6701.jpg?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1677178680&s=0495b547c46dde1799c35972ebedc244 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Kitchen-detail001_6701.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1677178680&s=3e431cbbf5b0cfe9c44425a8f9206e50 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Kitchen-detail001_6701.jpg?w=2360&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1677178680&s=656550b34ae9e5d4432cd1395a84fa79 2360w)
Kitchen, 2021
(detail)
Likewise, the apparent banality of the scene in Kitchen (2021), is rendered charged and compelling. Bathed in electric light, perspectives are skewed; the vegetables on a chopping board, for example, are tipped almost vertical for the viewer’s perusal. This treatment recalls the work of Philip Guston - a point of reference for the artist, whose influences also include Francisco Goya, Marcel Duchamp and Luc Tuymans. Williamson has stated that her subject matter was simply ‘what was on there that day,’ part of a chain of decisions that allow a seeing ‘beyond’ what is directly on view. ‘I make the table a window since there is nowhere else to go,’ she has said. ‘I turn the solids and the negative space into matter as dense as concrete.’
Margaux Williamson
Path, 2021
Margaux Williamson
Waterfall Painting, 2021
In Waterfall Painting (2021), the interior of a bar, devoid of people, features an extended wooden bar front or table, making up half of the composition. Several glasses, bottles and tea-lights suggest people are present, but just outside the frame and behind the bar a large, blank mirror – an abstract rectangle of near-solid grey – makes an oblique reference to Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882). Numerous other objects, common to any bar scene, including rows of bottles and spirits, a stereo and a sketch of a waterfall, denote a warmth which seems to have all but disappeared from the room on view.
Suspended between a myriad of viewpoints, Williamson's paintings allow us to simultaneously look at, above and over her subject matter, offering an abstracted and individualised mode of looking. ‘I am the painter and this is what I am seeing,’ she has remarked.
![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Waterfall-Painting-detail004_6667.jpg?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477550&s=9cfe5b72875b1f9429e41206b8e5c7f1 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Waterfall-Painting-detail004_6667.jpg?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477550&s=9d7ea41268619d002c56c064e83b50c4 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Waterfall-Painting-detail004_6667.jpg?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477550&s=80790856f312e7f4eaf8db77520015e9 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Waterfall-Painting-detail004_6667.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477550&s=a5a2abf0e060d0dd9157416afec4905a 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/Margaux-Waterfall-Painting-detail004_6667.jpg?w=2360&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676477550&s=a9fb0aeea8c503a4e6a2f0e3f0bf90b0 2360w)
![Portrait photo of the artist](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/File_016.png?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676478205&s=3d875bf052cab67a7e85b480f9c43685 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/File_016.png?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676478205&s=fbea07d45027e321d53ae79515128ee3 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/File_016.png?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676478205&s=30c76e684d464c3a97b1b5d90b13e204 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/File_016.png?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676478205&s=1b93c27e06bfdb86fb5d752b734ac981 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Online-Exhibitions/Introductions/Margaux-Williamson/File_016.png?w=2049&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1676478205&s=277f5e3afaf49556a04973b930963e7e 2049w)
Margaux Williamson was born in 1976 and is an artist based in Toronto. Her last series of paintings was made into a book called I Could See Everything, published by Coach House Press. She has been artist-in-residence at MacDowell in New Hampshire, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the Klondike Institute in the Yukon. McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, will be hosting an exhibition of her work from the last ten years, in September 2021.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Parisian Laundry, Montreal (2017); Mulherin + Pollard, New York (2014); Marvelli Gallery, New York (2007); and Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, Toronto (2006). Recent group exhibitions include: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2020); Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2016); Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada (2016); Frith Street Gallery, London (2014); Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto (2007).
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