Very Fantastically Arranged

A richly illustrated first monograph of artist Caragh Thuring, whose unique and layered paintings invite a boundless reimagining of her subjects.

This dedicated volume is the first to comprehensively document the work of Caragh Thuring, the London-based painter and artist. With over 200 images of Thuring’s work, as well as written contributions by Laura Smith and Helen Marten, and a conversation with Ralph Rugoff, Very Fantastically Arranged offers a deep dive into the themes, obsessions, and slippery subjects the artist investigates in her vibrant, multi-layered, and often irreverent paintings.

Thuring paints fluidly and intuitively, without preparatory drawings, and arranges imagery in opposition to logical and comfortable hierarchies. In a constantly filtering world, her fractured yet deft compositions of people and places create intriguingly disjunctive images that interweave technological, human, and natural worlds. Thuring’s practice relishes but undermines the inherent flatness of painting, destabilizing the viewer and forcing them to reconsider how they have been conditioned to look and see.

This volume reveals, as Laura Smith writes, Thuring’s endeavor “to assemble, repeat and reconstruct details from her environment, biography and history into a new and ever-evolving narrative that is as much ours as it is hers to complete.”