This page brings together fragments of thinking, references, and process notes that sit behind Collision. Not as explanation, but as traces, overlaps, and the points where two practices quietly meet.
Memory, inner worlds, imagined space, intimacy, and emotional presence. Shared questions that sit beneath both practices and shape the exhibition.
Emma Woolley’s practice centres on intimacy, connection, and the emotional space between people. Working primarily through portraiture and figurative painting, her work explores moments of quiet tension, closeness, and vulnerability, where expression is held rather than explained.
For Collision, Woolley’s research is grounded in memory and lived experience, using the human figure as a site for emotional presence. Faces and bodies become vessels for what is felt but rarely articulated, allowing personal narratives to remain open, unresolved, and shared.
Tara Harris’ practice explores memory, imagination, and the inner landscapes shaped by emotional experience. Her paintings occupy spaces that feel both familiar and unsettled, drawing on dream logic, recollection, and the way memories shift and distort over time.
Within Collision, Harris’ research is rooted in the subconscious, using imagined environments as containers for feeling rather than narrative. Space, atmosphere, and ambiguity become tools for holding emotional truth, allowing meaning to remain fluid and open to interpretation.
T.H. 31.01.26
extracted and reframed from interview material, u1 Gallery
collision principle 01
work emerges through negotiation, not intention
The work develops through response, resistance, and adjustment. Decisions are made through making, rather than pre-planned outcomes.
collision principle 02
instability is a productive state
Orientation remains fluid. Shifts, rotation, and delay allow new meaning to surface rather than forcing resolution.
collision principle 03
inner worlds outweigh external description
The work prioritises psychological and emotional terrain over literal representation. Feeling takes precedence over depiction.
collision principle 04
meaning is completed by the viewer
Narrative is withheld. Interpretation remains open, allowing the viewer’s response to activate the work.
collision principle 05
making as recalibration
The act of making functions as grounding and reset. Painting becomes a space for processing change without explanation.
E.W. 28.01.26
Collision Thinking...
"A sketch drawn on the back of an envelope. An early way of thinking about what it might feel like to step into Collision. Bodies slipping between spaces, parts of us ending up somewhere unexpected."
E.W. 28.01.26
Collision Thinking...
"I’m interested in what happens when an image resists completion. When a face, a gesture, or a space holds something back, allowing the viewer to meet it halfway. These moments of restraint feel closer to lived experience than resolution ever could.
Within Collision, this sense of holding rather than explaining feels central. The work sits in the space between recognition and uncertainty, where meaning isn’t fixed but felt, and where connection emerges through what remains unresolved."
E.W. 28.01.26
Collision Thinking...
"I keep returning to the idea of memory as something physical rather than narrative. Not what happened, but how it sits in the body. The pause before a look, the weight of a presence, the space left behind when something or someone is no longer there. These are the moments I’m interested in holding.
In Collision, this way of thinking feels shared. Different visual languages, but a similar pull towards what is sensed rather than explained, towards images that allow feeling to surface without resolving it."