Everything & the Kitchen Sink, Catherine Lette

About

‘Everything and the kitchen sink’ – Catherine Lette Solo Show 15th June – 2nd July

Lido Stores Margate

The kitchen is a place where love and laughter can turn to tears and anguish in a split second.  In her first solo show ‘Everything & the kitchen sink’ Catherine Lette presents a new series of paintings and collages that engage with the varying humours and paces of life at home.  Continuing her interest in domestic space after the pandemic lockdowns Lette explores the binary nature of containment and our relationship to daily routines.  Her compositions revel in the absurdity of life and the ability of art to mimic and satirise our everyday selves.  From figures bathing in the washing up to those who have melded themselves into kitchen implements Lette uses the malleability of paint and collage to create forms that speak of the inner psyche and outer body as they contend with the tasks they have been set. 

Lette considers herself a magpie in influence and is happy to ransack art history combining references from the Renaissance to feminist, surrealist, modern and contemporary art.  Making drawings, collages and paintings rooted in personal experience, she uses images of her own figure and those around her to imagine a world in which our bodies might physically reflect our states of mind.  In her work bodies get themselves in a literal twist, whilst surrounding objects, framing choices and artwork titles wield agency in the alternate world that the artwork exists within.  In process she is experimental weaving together images combining diaristic elements of her life as a mother, artist and wife, with imaginative propositions.  She values play, allowing instinct and making to lead the way, balancing learnt activities with chance encounters. 

Catherine Lette is a practicing painter from Cornwall now living and working in South London. With a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and in History from Oxford, Lette has developed her painting practice over the past few years at Turps art school.  She has participated in numerous group shows, curator’s selections, prizes and exhibitions.  Notably she has been shortlisted for the prestigious Ingram Prize ’22, Hari Art Prize ‘22,  featured in Business Traveller UK, included in Auc Art’s ‘Ones to watch’, shortlisted for Jackson’s Painting Prize ’21 and published in Art Maze Mag’s issue 21.  Her work is held in private collections in the UK and internationally.