Disc Unknown

Exhibition

Disc Unknown

05 June 2026 - 25 July 2026

Wed - Sat, 11am - 6pm

Pipeline, London

Pipeline 5 June – 25 July 2026

Castlefield Gallery 2 – 30 August 2026

Disc Unknown, a solo exhibition by artist Joe O’Rourke, will open at Pipeline, London on Thursday 4 June. The exhibition continues from 5 June to 25 July. Following this, the body of work will develop and be shown in a different way at Castlefield gallery in August.

Disc Unknown is a solo exhibition of mixed-media paintings that will respond to each gallery space. Presented differently across both venues, the body of work remains conceptually unified. Through shifts in scale and using various materials, found objects, and text, O’Rourke examines how meaning is constructed within painting. The exhibition brings together his ongoing series of DVD-case works alongside larger wall-based and freestanding pieces, guiding viewers through a landscape of recurring motifs, texts, and materials.

Living in Manchester has shaped O’Rourke’s experience of urban environments, influencing his use of materials and themes that reflect urbanisation, labour, and the boundaries between public and private space. His paintings are often inspired by everyday encounters; an overheard conversation or something glimpsed from a bus window. He repurposes found objects as a response to overconsumption and mass-production. This engagement with Manchester and his surroundings roots O’Rourke’s artworks in a specific time and place.

O’Rourke’s proposal was selected through an open call as part of Castlefield Gallery’s commitment to supporting artists with real career-development opportunities as part of its Castlefield Gallery Associates programme, resulting in a record number of submissions from members. United by a shared commitment to amplifying the work and voices of emerging artists, the Castlefield Gallery and Pipeline partnership is a rare platform that connects regional practice to national visibility.

This is an exciting opportunity to restage my work across two distinct settings, testing how painting can circulate between scales, spaces, and audiences, shifting between intimacy and immersion, image and environment

Joe O'Rourke

Joe O’Rourke

Joe O’Rourke (b.1995) is a Manchester-based artist and teacher. O’Rourke is interested in the emotional responsiveness of painting and its expanded possibilities. He’s drawn to painting because it offers both an internal psychological space and an external encounter – pulling the viewer inward while also referring them back to the world. Working across multiple scales and media, found materials and text often function as points of entry and departure into both the making and viewing of the work. He’s interested in the ideas that materials carry; how they can root the work in a time and place and hold tensions between the handmade and mass-produced, the intimate and the public. Living in Manchester has shaped his sensitivity to the felt experience of urban environments, using materials and motifs that reference urbanisation, labour, and thresholds between internal and external, private and public space. In the studio, his ideas emerge from intuition through slow looking– allowing objects, images, text and materials to collect meaning.

O’Rourke graduated in 2017 from Edinburgh College of Art, and in 2018, he was a prize-winner in the John Moores Painting Prize. In 2019, he began the national collaborative painting project ‘Painters Posting Paintings’. He has taught at Edinburgh College of Art, Manchester School of Art, and the University of Greater Manchester.

Joe thinks about painting as an environment rather than a single image. This collaboration with Castlefield Gallery creates a compelling framework for that idea to unfold across two distinct spaces and audiences. For Pipeline, the project reflects an important commitment to working beyond London and building meaningful exchanges between artists, institutions and audiences across the UK

Tatiana Cheneviere, Founder of Pipeline

Pipeline

Tatiana Cheneviere is the founder of London gallery, Pipeline (est. 2022). Pipeline’s core concern is to support meaningful engagement with artists and their work. The gallery usually operates as a divided space of the main exhibition area, and a room which features one work by the artist whose exhibition is forthcoming. Selected by the artist, this introductory work reveals particulars of their current practice or potentials for the future, providing essential context with each exhibition. Pipeline’s programme is focused on cross-regional collaboration, working with artists and institutions beyond the UK capital.