Shallow Gallery presents HUM, a collection of paintings and drawing by Matthew Clifton and Emma Wilde.
On view between: 19th of February to the 5th of April.
HUM is the quiet soundtrack of the in-between hours, capturing the subtle resonance felt in suburban spaces when the day hangs suspended. 3PM in a cul-de-sac, where the murmur of birds chirping bleeds into the drone of tyres passing by on the dual carriageway.
This exhibition brings together the distinct practices of Matthew Clifton and Emma Wilde, two artists who tune into the frequencies of British suburban landscapes. Their work listens to the places where human design and nature meet, mingle and sometimes wrestle, finding beauty in the margins.
Matthew Clifton paints pictures that exist in the liminal space between the trickle of a water feature and the pong of a waste management centre. A Jelly Belly coloured shrine to a world of planning permissions and gogglebox discourse. The world is at arms length with the weekend on its way.
Emma Wilde focuses her drawings and paintings on the overlooked pockets of Milton Keynes. Exploring the subtle relationships where nature and the built environment co-exist and impose upon one another. Those in-between moments, finding narrative in the tangles of foliage against concrete, the quiet life flourishing at the edges. Wilde’s practice is a quiet but intense observation of the everyday, where latent drama vibrates beneath a calm surface.
HUM brings the work of Matthew Clifton and Emma Wilde into conversation, weaving Clifton’s scenes, bugs and artefacts with Wilde’s quiet observations to amplify our environment’s subtle background noise. Together they invite us to pause, look and listen to the everyday suburban experience.
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Matthew Clifton lives and works in Leeds.
Emma Wilde lives and works in Milton Keynes, and is an Arts Central Studios studio holder.
Shallow Gallery is on the outside walkway of the centre:mk, to the left of Field Walk entrance (Door 13) and next to Next. The gallery is free to visit and publicly accessible 24/7.
Start: 2026-02-19 00:00:00
End: 2026-04-05 23:59:59
Location: Shallow Gallery