Borderlands Project 2023 -
‘Borderlands: Thresholds in Painting’ – an up-coming group exhibition at Pictorem Gallery, London December 2025
Neil Groom’s current project investigates borderlands—threshold spaces where artistic disciplines, temporalities, and identities intersect. His practice is grounded in a tactile engagement with traditional painting and printmaking materials, intricately layered with both obsolete and contemporary technologies. Groom moves fluidly between early computer-age media such as 1920s pianola paper, digital tools used to generate embroidery machine drawings, and the enduring physicality of the etching press. These diverse processes become conduits through which past and present converse.
By combining traditional techniques with experimental approaches, Groom reimagines painting as a porous, adaptive medium—capable of absorbing and transforming other disciplines. His compositions often occupy a space between abstraction and representation, evoking the ambiguity and instability of cultural and emotional borderlands. Within these liminal zones, Groom invites viewers to reflect on shifting notions of identity, memory, and belonging—emphasizing the creative potential that arises when boundaries dissolve and new forms emerge.