The Comrades They Were Brave, We salute you: 44 Great Russel Street, London

18 March - 16 April 2022
  • This artist curated exhibition brings together seven contemporary artists who all engage in defiance. Conceived as an homage to Edith Garrud (1872- 1971), Jiujitsu martial arts teacher to the suffragettes, it explores the theme of fighting for a cause. 

     

    Artists: Cecilia Sjoholm,  Deborah Tchoudjinoff, Garth Gratrix, Hatty Buchanan, Iain Hales, Jillian Knipe, and Laura Moreton-Griffiths.

     

    Curated by Cecilia Sjoholm. 

    With thanks to Harold Offeh and Morgan Quaintance for guidance. 

    Catalogue essay by Chris Fite-Wassalik. 

    Supported by Arts Council England.

     

    This artist curated exhibition brings together seven contemporary artists who all engage in defiance. Conceived as an homage to Edith...

    Top to bottom: Elsie, Maud, Irene, 2022

  • 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 Smyth

    Textiles are key to the work of Hatty Buchanan. From Buchanan's engaging 'Alter Ego Series', 2022, of painted linen and...

    Maud, 2022

  • Genre-bending works that resist codification to look beyond the binary, to a world of infinite possibility, fluidity and freedom.

    Blurring boundaries between painting and sculpture as well as craft and fine art forms, Hatty Buchanan's " Alter Egos" draw on a wide range of fashion, familial, artistic, historical and theatrical references to summon characters typical of her playful approach to the productive tensions among opposites. Whilst these works appear to be abstract, they are titled 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 infinite possibility, fluidity and freedom.

  • Fuelled by a love of fashion, form, and material, Hatty draws on personal narratives to explore the complex nature of...

    Fuelled by a love of fashion, form, and material, Hatty draws on personal narratives to explore the complex nature of identity and power dynamics of relationships through work that exists between abstraction and figuration.  Aged fourteen and a natural loner seeking an escape, Hatty immersed herself in London's underground culture of the 1980s and beyond where she observed the unspooling stories of a host of unconventional characters. Her aesthetic involves a particular type of tactility and usage of common items, often those related to clothing; yet her work is also soaked with art-historical references and a theatrical playfulness, creating a tension between formal authority and nonconformist energy. 

     
    Hatty’s work includes textile-based assemblages, typewriter collages, and table-top sculptures.  She has a studio practice in Leicester and is Director of Rochelle workspaces in Shoreditch, London, and Camp & Furnace Ltd, Liverpool.  Her work is held in several private collections, including Maureen Paley Private Collection.  Recent exhibitions include: selected guest artist, No Reserve, Intersectional Feminist Art Collective (InFems) Group Show, Leicester Contemporary, 2021: and the Royal Academy Summer Show, London, 2020.

     

    Born 1967, London

    Currently lives and works in Leicestershire. 

    All images: David Goymer