Matthew Arthur Williams, Tuff Luv (2025), Giclée print, 117 x 89 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Primary.
PREVIEW: 6 June 2025, 6–9PM
EXHIBITION: 7 June – 14 August 2025
OPENING TIMES: Thursday–Saturday, 10AM–6PM, or by appointment.
WHERE: Gallery 1 and Gallery 2. The second gallery upstairs is programmed in chapters and will be open to audiences on the following dates: 7 & 19 – 21 June; 3 – 5 & 17 – 19 July 2025.
Small Mercies is the first solo show in England by Glasgow-based artist Matthew Arthur Williams. Spanning both galleries at Primary, the exhibition combines new printed media, sound and moving image.
In Gallery 1, textiles dyed with hibiscus dangle over windows, and black and white and colour darkroom prints resting on top of plinths take centre stage.
Permeating within Gallery 2 is an evolving and ‘trickling’ installation of moving image from Williams and others. Featuring the debut of a major new 16 mm film, Another Allegory (2025), he softly expands from his prior works, An Impossible Allegory (2019) and Soon Come (2022), to poetically bring together complex landscapes charged with labour, love and abandonment. This landscape is amplified in the film through the score Williams co-produced with violinist Blaize Henry, responding to the devastating archive of Julius Eastman.
These throughlines slowly weave with Williams’ long-time reflection on the extractive British post-industrial landscape. Small Mercies is not a love story but an intimate and entangled narration of material histories and presence that ‘speaks with its chest’.
Small Mercies is supported by the Elephant Trust.
Artist Biography:
Matthew Arthur Williams (he/him) is an artist, photographer, lecturer, and DJ who lives and works in Glasgow. He completed his BA Photography at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2012. He frequently works with installations centring the photographic medium alongside moving image and sound.
He was awarded the Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship in February 2024 and the Cove Park Emerging Artist residency, supported by the Bridge Awards, in 2023. Recent exhibitions include Lives Less Ordinary, Two Temple Place, London (2025); Digging in Another Time: Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature at the Hunterian Art Gallery, We All Love The Same Boy, a two-person show with artist Emmie McLuskey; Pictures of Us at Gathering (London), and Five by Five at Incubator (London), all in 2024. His solo exhibition Soon Come, which consisted of photographic works, film and a sound installation, was presented at DCA, Dundee in 2023. He has developed exhibition projects and commissions with the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2022), Viborg Kunsthal, Denmark (2021), Jupiter Artland and Johnson Terrace Gardens as part of a commission for Edinburgh Art Festival (2021), Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow (2019) and Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2017). Williams’ research has recently been supported through programmes at Cove Park, Primary, CCA Glasgow, The Bothy Project, Hospitalfield and LUX Scotland. As of March 2023, he sits on the board of trustees for The Bothy Project, and in 2023, he has taken up the post as a Lecturer in Fine Art Photography at the Glasgow School of Art.
Access:
Small Mercies will be partly located on our ground-floor gallery space, which has full, level access from our main entrance on Seely Road. However, there is no step-free access to our first-floor gallery space. The films in Gallery 2 will be available to watch on a monitor in the Reading Room.
If you would like to make a group booking or visit our exhibitions at a quiet time, please get in touch with us at admin@weareprimary.org or 0115 924 4493 to arrange.
Large print, braille, and easy-read versions of the exhibition text will be available at our Reception; please ask our Front of House Assistant for details. Check back on this page for an audio version of the exhibition text.
You can find further access information on our website’s Visit Us page and via AccessAble.
Please email admin@weareprimary.org or call 0115 924 4493 with any access inquiries.
