Katherine Hattam
Language, Names, Lists and a Dream
9 October – 9 November 2019
Katherine Hattam’s work encompasses themes of feminism, domesticity, time, autobiography and psychology. Her works often combine a dual representation of the public and private spheres; they are locations for the intersection of memory, space and autobiography, littered with the objects and influences that have shaped her. Language, Names, Lists and a Dream has grown from this long-standing practice of filling her works with her influences. In the past she has painted interiors filled with the accoutrements of her domestic life and studio practice but also included within her paintings the artwork of friends or heroes — within Hattam's works her hairbrush and artist brushes might sit alongside a sculpture by Rob McHaffie and a painting by Rose Wylie, for example.
In recent works Hattam has responded to Philip Guston’s 1973 painting Pantheon, in which Guston listed his personal canon of European male painters, by creating her own pantheons of female artists. In Language, Names, Lists and a Dream, Hattam has broadened her scope to draw from data gathered by surveying 150 peers for their three favourite female-identifying artists. Each name in the paintings is colour coded depending on how many times each artist was mentioned. These names are incorporated into a number of paintings including Our List, My List and The Nearby List.
