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Each piece is crafted from a dynamic combination of textiles that reference a range of contexts and meanings: stiff painted canvas, limp imitation fur, wet-look synthetics, coquettish feathers and sparkly threads are merged unexpectedly as a metaphor for the individual who resists easy placement and categorisation.
Blurring boundaries between painting and sculpture as well as craft and fine art forms, “ Alter Egos” draw on a wide range of fashion, familial, artistic, historical and theatrical references to summon characters typical of Hatty's playful approach to the productive tensions among opposites. Whilst these works appear to be abstract, they are titled after popular women’s names of the 1920s and 30s: Hilda, Dorothea and Maud connect the work to an era of social change, with new rights and shifting roles for women.
The work is handmade in the studio mobilising behaviours and processes particular to the material dispositions of cloth: textiles bend, fold, fray, caress, are cut, stitched and ultimately remade into new objects. Each piece begins with artist canvas that has been saturated with traditional oil paint and mediums so that paint and canvas become one: pigments are used directly from the tube, or with minimal colour mixing, to achieve a strength and clarity of colour.
Exploring the creative frictions within undoing and remaking these painted canvases are cut-up, reconfigured and sewn back together to form new works that fluctuate between handmade quilts, protest banners and formal abstract art.
Taking the form of tactile assemblages, each piece is crafted from a dynamic combination of textiles that reference a range of contexts and meanings: stiff painted canvas, limp imitation fur, wet-look synthetics, coquettish feathers and sparkly threads are merged unexpectedly as a metaphor for the individual who resists easy placement and categorisation.
The variety of sources assembled reflects an eclectic material sensibility - aesthetic, utilitarian, mass produced, found, theatrical, repurposed or recomposed - and leads to the creation of a non-hierarchical system that refuses to privilege the readymade over the hand crafted, painting over sewing, or one history over another. Intentionally genre-bending, these works resist codification to look beyond the binary, to a world of fluidity and freedom.