Bodies, Gluttony, and Me.

About

Pictorum Gallery London is delighted to showcase Bodies, Gluttony, and Me, a multidisciplinary exhibition of painting, performance, soft sculpture, and drawing. Featuring works by seven women artists, the show celebrates the grotesque, the carnivalesque, and the unexpected. Each artist considers what it is to go against society's expectations for women and women's bodies, drawing on the sin of gluttony to express enjoyment, humour, voyeurism, gender, feminism and transgression.

This exhibition stems from a wider art history where women artists present their own bodies as a sight of political activism and conflict. Considering past works by artists such as Alina Szapocznikow, Carolee Schneemann, and even Dolly Parton, each of the eight participating artists' works appear within this widely documented and considered history of pioneering women.

Bodies, Gluttony, and Me is inaugurated by a performance by Qingqing Lui, Dragon Spam (2022). Liu's practice spans moving image, performance, installation, and text. Dragon Spam (2022) plays with a surreal and somewhat absurd scenario of Lui interacting with both man-made and non-man-made objects, including SPAM, to draw attention to the impact of consumerism on women's self-image and bodies. The finale of the performance sees Lui etch 'FLESH' into the block of 'meat' with a large and imposing knife. Liu holds an MA in Contemporary Art Practice: Moving Image from the RCA and has exhibited across Europe
and Asia. 

Throughout the show, we see women's bodies unbound by stereotypes, as in works by Nettle Grellier and Faye Eleanor Woods. Grellier's works are semi-autobiographical, showcasing portraits of women in ungainly positions, at once 'grotesque and beautiful'. Taking influences from artists such as Paula Rego and Dolly Parton, she uses references across high and low culture to delight in unashamedly slovenly, feral, and unpredictable womanhood.  In this exhibition, a series of five drawings hones in on the artist's interest and obsession with being observed and observing; eating and playing. Having always lived and worked in rural settings, Nettle also examines the nature of gossip and storytelling as tradition. Nettle has exhibited in the UK, America, Europe, and Australia. She most recently had a solo presentation at Huxley Parlour Gallery, 'She Always Does Have a Good Time'.

Woods' works are, in her own words, 'a love letter to experience'; the absurdity and humour of life. Her recent works heavily feature the much-loved establishment the British pub. To Woods, the pub represents a state of emotional freedom where the act of dancing, singing, and drunken debauchery transcends time. The pub is a representation of the inner psyche; the room within rooms teetering on the edge of disaster, hysteria, and joy. Woods' women are often ruddy faced, laughing, and unapologetically taking up space with drink in hand. The figures luxuriate in their physicality - legs akimbo, tongues out, nostrils flared. They revel in their own excess and demand our attention and appreciation. Woods graduated in 2021 from Gray's School of Art and was featured in the 2023 New Contemporaries at the Royal Scottish Academy.

Anna Choutova's practice is riddled with personal experience. Coming from an Eastern European background and thrown into a Westernised upbringing in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Choutova's practice functions as a form of rose- tinted voyeurism into an idealised Western culture. The culture Choutova was born into both fetishizes and demonizes consumerist culture. Thus, the artists practice reflects this duality and comments on the push-pull of East and West that exists within her. She has put herself between Malevich and McCarthy and is on a mission to marry destitute bleakness with inconceivable excess in her own practice. Choutova holds an MFA from Slade School of Fine Art, and recently published Husband Material, a printed book-come-collage dedicated to best friend and co-conspirator Andrea Gomis.

Zoe Francis Spowage creates raucous and all-encompassing large-scale paintings. The artist invites us into her world of seemingly impulsive revelry led by bold, strong, and powerful women. Spowages' women are mostly nude and muscular - defying societal expectations as well as impressing. The artist draws inspiration from imagination and life, working intuitively with subject and material to create her playful scenes. Spowage is a graduate of Flamoth University and was recently shortlisted for the British Woman Artist Prize. Earlier in 2022 Spowage had a solo presentation at Xxijra Hii, London.

Damaris Athene's transdisciplinary practices explores new ways of viewing the materiality of the body and understanding the body's potential. Creating fascinating soft sculptures,  Athene showcases an evolving practice where the digital and the physical meld. Fruiting_Body.001 (2023) is a key work within Athene's practice and explores the overlap between the body, technology, and the posthuman. A large, padded, three dimensional 'painting', Fruiting_Body.001 (2023) is at once familiar and bodily, whilst also appearing strange and unsettling. The edges of the work softly glow, hinting at Athene's fascination with ideas of the 'sublime and the slippery'. Athene is currently studying for her MA in Fine art from City and Guilds of London Art School. Selected exhibitions include 'Trussed Up and Nowhere to Go', 2022 (solo), at ] G A Z E [ Art Space; 'I Wish I Was As Hot As My Memoji', 2021 (solo) at TOD Gallery; 'If Only I Could Be 2D', 2021 (solo), at Compact Contemporary; and 'Cheer Up Love' (solo) at Cambridge University.