Violet Handforth
Black Swallow Sucking Dirt

1 DEC 2026 until 30 JAN 2027
Opening – 28 NOV 2026, 6-9 pm

‘An artwork is meant to be used like I am of use to the universe,’ says Violet Handforth (b. 2000 in Salzburg, lives and works in New York). “Black Swallow Sucking Dirt” is not only her first exhibition at BQ, but also her very first solo exhibition.

Violet Handforth’s practice of drawing in ink (and sometimes charcoal, pigment and oil wash) on paper, embraces accident as a way of setting a drawing in motion. The impetus of an initial line, drip, or gestural sweep is followed, allowing an image to emerge, usually large-scale and defined in thick inky outlines. The line tends towards representation, picturing figures dropped out of time and accompanied by, if not morphing into, animals. But there is also concerted backtracking: lines blanked out in white, their sponta- neity reversed and new directions chosen. These negotiations remain as ghostly traces, evidence of the back-and-forth between intention and accident that underlies Handforth’s creative process and draws on her academic research into the Philosophy of Religion.

The emergent images breed on a bed of other existing images, from mythological illustrations, children’s books, art historical sediments, or the compulsive figurations of algorithmic feeds. Her drawings teeter on the brink of  familiarity, without indulging a single meaning or resolving into narrative. Instead, figures, animals and oblique scenarios accumulate, while interpretation hangs loosely in the air. These drawings appear instinctive, like the innate ability to swim in someone born into an ocean of images.

Text by Kirsty Bell