STRUAN TEAGUE
“Richeldis Fine Art, Barcelona is proud to present a solo exhibition by Struan Teague, introducing his most extensive body of recent work to date. The exhibition also features selected sculptures by Swedish emerging artist Fanny Hellgren forming a dialogue between the artists’ shored explorations of landscape, memory, and materiality”
Struan Teague’s (b. 1991, Edinburgh) compositions open a space for subtle visual inquiry, balancing restraint with a sensitivity to material and form. Built from nuanced layers of oil, acrylic, graphite, ink, and conte pastels, his works reflect a measured interplay between intentional marks and the accidental textures of the canvas-creases, stains, and folds that become integral to each composition.
This exhibition marks a continuation ofTeague’s exploration of memory and landscape, drawing from personal archives of photographs and sketches, where fleeting details-the imprint of a tide’s retreat, and the shifting lines of wind-blown dunes-inform his abstract vocabulary. These quiet gatherings of marks evoke overlooked fragments of experience, creating contemplative spaces that linger between familiarity and abstraction. This collection reflects Teague’s evolving connection with diverse environments, from the rugged shores of Scotland’s Isle of Eigg to the textured landscapes ofTorino, Italy. His Scottish series draws from Eigg’s coastline, subtly evoking the island’s rocks, seaweed, and shifting sands in Laig Bay. Shades of mossy greens and greys recall the natural textures of Arisaig’s Larachmhor Garden, lending an organic rhythm to his work that speaks to the Scottish landscape’s raw and elemental beauty. His Italian works,
meanwhile, introduce the use of Ercolano blue-a traditional pigment that connects his work to classical frescoes and the art historical narratives of the Renaissance. In these compositions, Teague juxtaposes the natural earth tones of the raw canvas with carefully applied layers of oil and acrylic, allowing for a contemporary reinterpretation of time-honoured materials. Teague further draws from the muted tones and structural canopies of market rain covers, alongside the fog-laden views of the Po and Dora rivers. These elements lend his Italian pieces a layered, regional resonance that deepens his abstract vocabulary.
Teague’s process is rooted in a balance of control and chance. He begins with loose, unstretched canvases laid directly on the studio floor, embracing the unpredictability of unplanned marks, stains, and gestures that accumulate over time. As the work develops, he refines certain elements while leaving others untouched, creating a layered visual dialogue between accident and intention. The resulting compositions capture fleeting impressions of landscape and memory, allowing each mark and layer to resonate with a sense of impermanence.
Struan Teague (b.1991, Edinburgh) lives and works in London. Using extremely simple pictorial materials and media, such as oil, acrylic, spray paint, pencil, collage, dripping and recycled bits of paint found on his studio floor, Teague delves into the unexplored possibilities of their combinations in large and small formats. He creates self-referential visual languages where the automatism of the lines, the doodles, the gestures, the small dabs of colour on textured grounds and the off-centre compositions open up spaces of possibility that defy critical dogmatism, conceptual rationalism and language as mere communication, occupying its fringes to maintain an inexhaustible poetic unfolding.
Recent publications : RFA X emérgent magazine
Recent Group exhibitions include : Struan Teague & Fanny Helllgren - Richeldis Fine Art, Barcelona, Artist Rooms, Richeldis Fine Art & Encounter Contemporary, London , Zona Maco, Galerie Miquel Alzueta, Mexico (2019), Abstract - Reality, The Saatchi Gallery, UK (2018), Markers, Richeldis Fine Art & Encounter Contemporary, London (2017), Attitudes in Painting, Lepsien Art Foundation, Germany (2017). Teague’s work is represented in numerous public and private collections internationally. Solo exhibition The unbearable lightness of being, The Court, Italy, (2018), Say something, Galerie Kernal, Spain (2017), Nil NIl, Galerie Miquel Alzueta, Barcelona (2019).
