Mary Weatherford: Train Yards
This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Mary Weatherford: Train Yards at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London. The paintings in Weatherford’s Train Yard series (2016–20) evoke both a celestial night sky and a nocturnal view of train yards and tracks, replete with heavy, clanging machinery, bright lights approaching and receding, and harmonic whistles.
The series is the artist’s first body of work in nearly a decade to partially eschew neon, emitting light in new ways: in some, Weatherford has splattered silver paint across the dark surface, which reads as stars in a night sky. Because she worked on the Train Yards intermittently, over the course of five years, one can observe changes in paint handling from one work to the next.
The publication documents the thirteen paintings in the series alongside installation photography and features a new essay by curator and art historian Laura Hoptman, illustrated with historical photographs of trains and related imagery selected by the artist.