Changing Rooms Art Exhibition

Changing Rooms

Changing Rooms, is an exhibition that challenges social and artistic boundaries observed as artists employing traditional techniques of painting within the Eastern and Western visual framework.

Developed over a 12-month period supported by the Hunterian Museum, studying the sketchbooks, paintings and Asian ceramics from the Estate of James McNeill Whistler bequeathed to the museum by his sister-in-law Rosalind Birnie Philip, Liu and Thomas have created a new body of work which explores colour, paint and finish to create new spaces and places, offering new painterly formats that nod to both a western and eastern aesthetic.

Sharing the process of painting works large and small scale, Liu and Thomas subvert recognisable figures and scenes by introducing new figures and personal stories, with aim to question the authority of the maker when the story does not follow its expected ‘classical’ path.

This new collection is kindly presented by the Studio Pavilion set within the grounds of

House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park. This space which celebrates its 30-year anniversary, offers a link between the legacy of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald’s ‘Glasgow-Style’, and the American born painter Whistler, who pushed the axiom of what art making can be: exploration of space, form and colour.

Born and trained in China and Glasgow, Liu’s expressive painting practice experimenting with colour and mark-making is one that perseveres to translate a unique Asian perspective into one that can be read by a Western eye.

Trained in New York and Glasgow, British Painter Thomas’s paintings explore the figure in landscape, to question set visual canons, where power in gendered forms travel and mutate to create new meanings and ‘endings’.

This exhibition offers a one-off opportunity for collaboration, where a Glasgow audience can experience and witness a dual painting project between two experienced artists sharing a new forum to present their painting practice.

This exhibition runs in parallel with the first major European exhibition of Whistler’s works at Tate Britain in London: James McNeill Whistler: 21 May – 27 September 2026.

Glasgow International (GI) takes place in the city from 5-21 June 2026.

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