HIDDEN
MESSAGES.
DUNCAN WESTON
SAT 20 TH JUNE. 10 AM > 10 PM
THE LOWER GALLERY
2a WASHINGTON ROAD, CAVERSHAM
RG4 5AA. ELIZABETH LINE READING
If you look very closely at the bricks in the walls of the Lower Gallery, you will notice that, in one in a hundred bricks, there are fingermarks. These are the fingertips of the workers who would lift the wet clay bricks from the extruders and pile them high like pyramids into the gas fired kilns. A hundred and twenty years later, they are still here, indelibly marked and hidden in the walls.
For a single day, on June 20th, we are launching The Lower Gallery, by inviting international artist, graffiti conceptualist and general superstar Duncan Weston to create a unique participatory art installation.
Duncan will create site specific artworks that celebrate ‘the hidden message’ by embedding his work into the walls and floors of the gallery. After the show it will be sealed into the fabric of the building.
His signature tag will be painted across the back wall of the gallery. For a SINGLE DAY ONLY, visitors will have the chance to add their own name, and become part of a historic installation, before layers of insulation, plaster and paint seal the work in perpetuity.
A hidden compartment in the floor will hold an etched stone tablet with another of Duncan’s hidden messages to a future generation. It will be ceremoniously entombed into the floor by the same trades that helped build the gallery.
In addition Duncan’s large scale, abstracted canvases, study in forensic detail the psychological and physical condition of the graffiti inhabiting the shadowslands of bridges and alleyways local to the area.
The Lower Gallery is located in Lower Caversham, near Reading and was built in 2026. It is a private, not for profit, gallery space that promotes both craftsmanship and conceptualism, as we believe both are essential to true creative expression.
Duncan Weston is an internationally recognised multi disciplinary artist, his practice based heavily in graffiti and autobiographical conceptualism. His standout presentation at “BEYOND THE STREETS’ at the Saatchi Gallery, London was followed recently by ‘I AM HERE’ a solo show at The Horse, Dublin in 2024.
