Time Spaghetti is a one-room display of newly commissioned paintings and drawings by artists Lisa Contucci and Clifton Wright, with additional works by Stanley Galton presented alongside the Collection. Responding to the Gallery’s historic paintings and architecture, this will be the artists’ first major presentation in a public UK institution.
Contucci and Wright’s conversations with the history of art overlap and entangle, dancing back-and-forth through time. Sharing a fascination with detail yet with distinct styles, both artists present new individual bodies of work influenced by their experiences visiting Venice and Rome as well as their responses to the Collection. By bringing their works together in one display, Time Spaghetti offers surprising encounters and unexpected new perspectives on the art of the past.
Contucci, Wright and Galton are members of the Peckham-based collective, Intoart, which celebrates its 25-year anniversary in 2025. A pioneering multidisciplinary art, design and craft studio, Intoart champions the equity and visibility of learning disabled and autistic artists. Contucci starts her process with photography, building an archive comprising various snapshots of details, which are later translated into her paintings. Her abstract works draw attention to the materials shown in the historic paintings, from the costumes depicted to the fabric of the walls and furniture. Contucci’s Moving Heads (2024) echoes the palette of the vibrant clothing seen in Poussin’s The Triumph of David (c.1631-3), while the theatrical scene of Sébastien Bourdon’s A Brawl in the Guard Room (c.1640s) is referenced in the chaos and movement present in Beat and Bite (2024).
Playing with perspective, Contucci frequently moves her works as she applies paint, displacing the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ of the canvas, working and reworking them. Experimenting with different materials from acrylic paint to marble dust, she brushes bright blotches of colour into intriguing patterns and etches experimental pencil marks onto the surface.
In his large-scale drawings, Wright considers the relationship between the human figure and buildings. His oil and soft pastel drawings reimagine anatomy, accentuating the scale of limbs, eyes and mouths. Wright is especially drawn to the way that French seventeenth-century painter Nicolas Poussin worked from architectural models. By mergeing the past and the present, Wright weaves in contemporary pop culture references ranging from Ghostbusters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In response to the historic paintings at the Gallery, Clifton Wright, said: I was looking at these images and I was thinking about the multiverse and timelines…and [the word] spaghetti fitted perfectly with that… I have free rein to draw what I want to draw. I’m copying [the works in the Dulwich Picture Gallery Collection] but at the same time I’m trying to elevate them.”
Meanwhile, in other rooms of the Gallery, Stanley Galton presents playful drawings directly alongside the historic paintings that inspired them. Galton’s bold retelling of these well-known stories draws viewers into his vivid imagination.
Helen Hillyard, Curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery, said: “Lisa Contucci, Clifton Wright and Stanley Galton have such distinct styles and have responded to our Collection in varied ways. Yet, they share a fascinating ability to move seamlessly between the past and present, synthesising historic painting with pop culture and experimental techniques. Through their art, they can channel their individual experiences of the Gallery, resulting in work that is bold, eclectic and inspires us to look at the Gallery’s Collection with new eyes.”
Dulwich Picture Gallery until 11 January 2026.
