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Joseph Clark Collection

France-Lise McGurn

Born 1983, Glasgow · Painting and painted installation

France-Lise McGurn (born 1983, Glasgow) is a Scottish artist based in London whose figurative paintings often spill from the canvas onto gallery walls, floors and ceilings, drawing on music, dreams, memory and popular culture. Her work is in the Tate collection.

In the collection

About the artist

France-Lise McGurn was born in Glasgow in 1983 and lives and works in London. She studied Fine Art Painting at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee and took an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2012, including an exchange at Hunter College (The Modern Institute).

She works mainly in painting and drawing, making fluid figurative works that spill from the canvas onto gallery walls, floors and ceilings (Tate), with key themes of music, dreams, memory and popular culture (MASSIMODECARLO). Her solo exhibition Art Now: Sleepless ran at Tate Britain from 29 June to 8 September 2019 (Tate). Later solo shows include In Emotia at Tramway, Glasgow, in 2020 (MASSIMODECARLO), What Everyone Wants at The Modern Institute, Glasgow, in 2024 (The Modern Institute) and Bad TV, her first solo exhibition in Asia, at MASSIMODECARLO Hong Kong in 2025 (MASSIMODECARLO).

Tate holds her painting Get in the Car (2019) (Tate), and in 2022 she painted Skypark on the ceiling of the Djanogly Café at Tate Britain (Tate). Her work is also in the Zabludowicz Collection, the David Roberts Collection and the K11 Art Foundation, among others (MASSIMODECARLO). She is represented by MASSIMODECARLO (MASSIMODECARLO) and The Modern Institute (The Modern Institute).

Sources

  1. The Modern Institute, About France-Lise McGurn
  2. The Modern Institute, artist page
  3. The Modern Institute, What Everyone Wants (15 Mar to 13 Apr 2024)
  4. MASSIMODECARLO, artist page
  5. MASSIMODECARLO, biography (PDF)
  6. MASSIMODECARLO, Bad TV (Hong Kong, 19 Nov 2025 to 13 Mar 2026)
  7. Tate, Art Now: France-Lise McGurn: Sleepless press release
  8. Tate, artist page
  9. Tate, Get in the Car (T15544)
  10. Tate, Art Around the Building: France-Lise McGurn
A room in the Joseph Clark Collection hung salon-style: framed paintings, drawings and photographs cover two white walls, with sculptures on a teak sideboard and a white plinth below.
Installation view of the Joseph Clark Collection, including works by Zhang Enli, Tamsin Relly, Glenn Ligon, Louise Bourgeois, Ray Parker, Phyllida Barlow, Bengt Rosenström, Antonio Tarsis, Hugo Glendinning, Tim A Shaw, France-Lise McGurn, Mia Chaplin, Fabian Peake and Yukako Shibata.

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