Solo show by Ally Fallon, the youngest ever winner of the John Moores Painting Prize, at the Walker Art Gallery.
Ally Fallon takes over Room 13 at the Walker Art Gallery from 14 November 2026 to 16 May 2027, a solo show that arrives on the back of him becoming the youngest ever winner of the John Moores Painting Prize at 27. The prize-winning work, If You Were Certain, What Would you do Then?, is the piece that put him on the map.
Fallon is a Manchester painter who works in oil, and his influences sit at opposite ends of the tradition: the dramatic light and shadow of Caravaggio and Rembrandt on one side, and British abstraction on the other. There's a particular way he works that comes through in the finished paintings: when a piece isn't working, he paints over it, leaving the earlier layers to show through. It's a process of building up and covering over, and you can see those ghosts of previous versions in the final work.
One thing that ties the whole show together is the tiled floor that runs through each painting. Those aren't imagined — they're taken from real places Fallon has photographed: doorsteps and pubs in Manchester and Italy, with a few more borrowed from Renaissance paintings. It's a concrete, everyday detail that grounds the more abstract elements of his work.
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Before he turned to painting full-time, Fallon worked as a teacher, and he's now making his mark as one of the youngest painters to ever take the prize. The show also lands during a double anniversary for the city's art scene: the 70th anniversary of the John Moores Painting Prize and the 150th of the Walker Art Gallery itself. You'll find the exhibition in Room 13, running from 14 November 2026 through to 16 May 2027.
