I just don't know what it is... is this the future... or is it now?

Paul Grist is showing at Assembly House Studios this weekend, with the exhibition The Dream of a Faraway Place - To Be in Two Worlds at the Same Time. It runs across two days: Saturday 24 October from 4pm until late, and Sunday 25 October from 11am to 4pm. The studio is at 44 Canal Road in Armley, LS12 2PL, so it's off-campus rather than in the city centre.

The show takes its title and its starting point from a line by Gramsci, describing a time of catastrophe 'when the old world is dying and the new cannot be born'. Grist builds on that feeling of being stuck between two eras, and on the 'liminal' quality that so many contemporary artists claim for their work — that space between figuration and abstraction, or between painting and sculpture. He reads that ambiguity as an impulse to destabilise old certainties, and frames the whole thing as an 'optimism of the will', a way of finding a path out into a brighter future.

There's more to it than just the paintings on the wall. On the Saturday night, the exhibition is joined by an audio-visual performance from Racket Ball, which kicks off at 8:30pm. If you're planning to catch that, you'll want to be there for the later half of the opening day.

Grist himself is a part-time practice-led Postgraduate Researcher in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, where his research looks at how meaning is mediated in contemporary abstract painting. He's also been teaching in state secondary schools for the last 30 years. Entry is free, so you can drop in on either day: Saturday 24 October from 4pm until late, and Sunday 25 October from 11am to 4pm, at Assembly House Studios, 44 Canal Road, Armley.