Alongside the toothpaste works are compositions more typical of McNally's practice, layered with multiple perspectives,materialities, art historical references and 'Easter eggs' that connect one work to another. Touch and the act of makingremain central, articulated through sculptural objects, a biro pen and a ripped image of an artist at work. In the artist'shands, again subtly mismatched, one arm seemingly emerging from beyond the border, are a brush and scalpel, apalette smeared with paint and a blob of toothpaste. His intense focus is heightened by the cut out line around his face,dripping with blood. Here, the artist appears both immersed in and estranged from the act of making itself, caught bet-ween control and disintegration.

If the figure of the artist in McNally's painting suggests a slippage within the self, Roberts extends this experience out-wards into the surrounding space. In his depiction of an artist's studio, the artist has evolved into a cyborg-esque figure,with oversized, elongated limbs and a metallic helmet for a head. Images of his previous self are all around, most pointed-ly through a reflection in the mirror, which gazes past the robotic head out to the viewer, with an expression of unmistaka-ble disgust. This jaded self is not the one we see depicted in the self-portraits, tacked to the paint splattered walls - thoseimages are more youthful, as if the artist is stuck in a cycle that draws him continually back to the past.

The chaos of this scene contrasts the quiet interior spaces that Roberts typically paints, though the architecture still worksto convey a sense of frustration or constraint. Take, for instance, the painting in which a tall figure stands backed into acorner of a doorless room - except, of course, if we count the tiny door-like opening at the base of a wooden stall, thoughthis is only large enough for a mouse. The space itself is aesthetically pleasing, with the white panels evoking a grid-like,minimalist Japanese style: a vase of flowers, seedlings growing in tins, a dog asleep on a rug. Yet the lack of any real win-dows or external viewpoints is unsettling - we're not sure how to interpret this space. The figure themself seems caughtin a similar conundrum, their multiple limbs and two heads adding to the sense of the uncanny while also suggestive ofrepetitive motion. As with all of Roberts' compositions, the narrative is left intentionally open: is the figure simply daydrea-ming or stuck in some kind of psychological loop? Is the space one of containment or order - and at which point doesone tip into another?

Across both artists' work, repetition, doubling and spatial disorientation emerge as shared conditions of making, pointingless to stasis than to persistence. The act of return - whether to an image, space or material - becomes a gesture of hopeand renewal.