Molly Andrews

I-thought-linear-was-safe was an exhibition held in New Glasgow Society in April 2026. A small group show of four artists, it contained a collection of practices marking the quietness of text and the circle (O) particularly as a means of transmission.

Where the line constricts the voice and cuts across the mouth’s pathway to speech, the circle is both a gap, a voided O of silence, a non-verbal cycle, and an O of communication, a shout.

In articulating beyond dominant linguistics, inferences are important; the spherical open mouth, the shape words take and create as they are spoken, the arcs of letters, of sound waves, the dome, curve and lip of a bell. The work translates through other means, bypassing silenced methods of speech, in the body, with words (and their noise) revealed in step, by image and the drawn mark, by implication, by light or by will.

The show included a trialling of Tunnel Drawing #6, one half of the diptych ‘In Parallel’, which features in my degree show, and two accompanying sketches.

For my third piece, I presented a shelf of my sketchbooks as working documents that could be sifted through and handled, rather than precious, hidden or preserved behind glass. Documentation of the work involved photographing the sketchbook stack over time to capture different levels of exposure, or points of interest for audience members.

Thanks to the other artists involved in the exhibtion, Noé J. Bick, Ruth Babington and Jess Pickering. And to the GSASA for supporting the show.

This was a project undertaken in March 2026, examining the motif of the tunnel immersively as a junction space or crossroads. This work was created over the course of a week, partially in situ, within the Stow building’s LAB gallery space.

Exhibition Statement:

At a junction, tunnels may represent pathways, choices, intersections of lives. We move through them as best we can. Networks may run in tandem – but there are no parallel worlds.

Between text, sketchbooks and large-scale image, my work currently presents a drawing-based perspective on relationships, vulnerability and closeness, capturing moments of isolation, but equally, resolution between figures caring for one another, in underground intimacy. Just larger than life, my figures have weight and bodies have presence together, trapped or choosing to live within a metaphorical space that reflects this closeness back to them.

Where working marks shine through against the scrappiness of paper, there is a vulnerability of process which underpins the vulnerability of pose (closed off and protective, but equally, oblivious to observation) and with theatre influence, and elements of set dressing, there exists the invitation for habitation of the space and proximity to the characters. Moving within the space to be surrounded both by texture and emotion, suggestions of interactions begin to form – the choice to interrupt, to comfort, to pass further in, but inevitably the only option available, to stand by and watch.