IN HEAT at Blue Shop Cottage
by Nettle Grellier and Plum Cloutman
5th-12th May 2021 | 11am - 7pm
Please book an appointment hello@blueshopcottage.com
In Heat is a celebration of femininity, the side of femininity that women know very well, but has been ‘best kept away’ from the male gaze. In Heat is a chance for the artists and curator to wave their humour, absurdity and rough edges out for all to see. Here we have a show of honesty and humour - where we take a moment to revel in the absurd and raw femme that consumer culture would rather us not see.
As we emerge from 12 months of isolation and suppression let us revel in the coming together of artists, people and celebrate the essence of historically underrepresented artists. Trauma can be expressed, vulgarity is celebrated and in sharing all of this, we find ourselves increasingly connected and understood. By revealing these truths, we stand ever closer to a taste of something like freedom.
NETTLE GRELLIER
"This series of drawings aim to use humour to address themes of trauma and survival. They are perhaps the most drawn-from-personal-experience work I have made to date. Nude figures in the landscape are not a new subject in my work, however these works, all on a much smaller scale and drawn rather than painted, are more intimate. They are visual representations of a personal apocalypse. The imagery itself is sometimes fantastical, I've lost my fear of being left, for example, shows a nude woman riding a slug away from the viewer, towards freedom. There is a grotesque quality to many of the drawings: charming worms from bums and slugs from ears: the subject is trying to remove unhealthy ideas from their body. Pissing on a seedling to fertilise it represents the growth of new ideas and turning bodily excretions into something useful and positive. “Pull down your pants and suffocate the ants” “Nobody likes me, everyone hates me, I’m going down the garden to eat worms” are two rhymes that provided the background music to this series as it was drawn. The scale is intentional, zooming in and out is part of the process. The medium, pencil on paper is freeing, fast and low pressure – a good setup for the exploration of ideas. The framing, in response to the exhibition title ‘In Heat’ is intended to make the drawings glow, even in the dark."
Nettle Grellier (b. 1993) from Stroud, Gloucestershire. Grellier graduated from Brighton University, 2015 and recently completed the Turps Banana Correspondence Course 2019-20. Having begun her career in Spain, where she ran a residency: Los Artistas del Cortijo for early career artists, Nettle is now based in Falmouth, Cornwall where her work has been exhibited in Spain and Australia as well as in the UK.
Recent exhibitions: Safe as Milk, Arusha Gallery, co-curated by Anna Choutova online & Edinburgh 2021, IRL at Unit London; Antisocial Isolation at Delphian Gallery & at Saatchi, 2020. Solo shows include: That Art Gallery in Bristol and Line Gallery in Stroud.
PLUM CLOUTMAN
"There’s a conversation that I’ve had numerous times over the past year about humour and art, and its function as a respite from the relentlessly depressing news cycle. While I can see the antidotal properties of funny art in regards to our particular situation, I think that it has a place- and has always had a place- in the art canon, irrespective of whatever horror we happen to be suffering through at the time. Being moved by something doesn’t always manifest in a single tear on the cheek, and as an artist and an art viewer, I’ve always thought that the best reaction you can have to a piece of work in a gallery is the low guffaw, that comes from your gut."
Plum Cloutman (b.1995) is a painter and printmaker based between North Norfolk and London, who graduated from Edinburgh College of Art, 2018. Cloutman’s work illustrates a world of imagined characters, in situations that range from the tender and sad, to the absurd and wonderfully stupid in a textured and sensitive manner. In a scale fluctuating from minuscule to the monumental, Cloutman’s original language of ornamental topiary, wry and hazy dreamscapes celebrate the in-between.
Recent exhibitions: Tender Kith, 155A Gallery, London; Paintings On, And, With Paper: Cob Gallery, London, 2020. Solo Shows: Phrase and Fable, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh. Various Works, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh; RSA New Contemporaries and the Lyon and Turnbull Graduate Showcase. Her work has been awarded the Catriona White Prize and the Lyon and Turnbull Prize, 2019.