Tim Sandys’ Distribution 18 was the winning work of the inaugural Michael Harding Secret Coast Prize for Fine Art.
Now, in 'Distribution', we bring together a wider body of paintings from the same series — including Distribution 17, Distribution 18 and related works — to offer a deeper encounter with his practice.
This exhibition is not simply a celebration of a prize-winning painting. It is an opportunity to step inside the ongoing thinking, discipline and quiet intensity of an artist who works through structure, repetition, colour and surface.
Sandys’ Distribution series explores how paint behaves when held within a system — and how that system begins to shift, fracture, expand or resist control. These works carry a sense of order, but never feel fixed. They ask us to look slowly. To notice rhythm. To trace the decisions beneath the surface.
There is precision here, but also feeling. Constraint, but also freedom. Each painting holds the tension between intention and accident — between what is planned and what paint ultimately does.
When Distribution 18 won the first Secret Coast Prize for Fine Art, it stood out for its clarity, ambition and visual confidence. It felt resolved without being closed down. It invited return. That is the strength of this wider series too: the more time you give the work, the more it gives back.
The Secret Coast Prize for Fine Art was created to support serious, committed artists and to bring strong contemporary practice to Argyll’s Secret Coast. Tim’s exhibition is part of that promise in action — recognition leading to opportunity, and opportunity leading to a fuller platform for the artist’s work.
Distribution marks an important moment for both Tim Sandys and Tighnabruaich Gallery: a chance to celebrate the winner of the inaugural prize, and to share the depth, focus and force of the work that made Distribution 18 impossible to ignore.