Hatty Buchanan: The Comrades They Were Brave

Textiles are key to the work of Hatty Buchanan. From Buchanan's engaging 'Alter Ego Series', 2022, of painted linen and fake fur, come Maud, Elsie and Irene, here hung from bamboo sticks, dissolv­ing boundaries between craft and fine art and between painting and sculpture. Linen rectangles are stitched together, fringed with tufts that play with the notion of banners, but the trailing threads suggest vulnerabil­ity and an unruly attitude towards seams. These works are packed with painterly and performative purpose, referencing formalist painting as strongly as the tradition of sewing as women's work with clever rebelliousness.

 

Art Monthly, May 2022, Cherry Smythe

Blurring boundaries between painting and sculpture as well as craft and fine art forms, Hatty's "Alter Egos" draw on a mash-up of fashion, familial, artistic, historical and theatrical references to summon a multitude of characters typical of her playful approach.

Protest banners provide the starting point for tactile assemblages that mobilise behaviours and processes particular to the material dispositions of cloth  to explore the frictions within undoing and remaking - textiles bend, fold, fray, caress, are cut, stitched and made into new objects. Whilst these works appear to be abstract, they are titled after popular women's names of the 1920s and 30s: Irene, Elsie and Maud connect the work to an era of social change, with new rights and shifting roles for women.