Sleepovers, 2021
acrylic and gouache on paper
42 x 29cm
Ahead of her upcoming solo exhibition at Pipeline, Matilda Sutton introduces her practice with Sleepovers, a work which marks a point of change in her practice whilst remaining representative of her core process of working on paper with paint.
Drawing from feminist theory, myth and literary narratives, Sleepovers explores the figures of wild women, wolf women, yetis and ghosts. Threatening or friendly? Demonic or protective? Sutton’s figures exist in a space between the human and the bestial. Blurring the distinction between defined binaries, Sutton playfully disrupts traditional painting methods and the conceptual dualisms of ‘species’, the ‘body’ and the ‘self’. Her work sits in a space between drawing and painting in a material attempt to dissolve categorical ways of seeing. Through pictorial storytelling, Sleepovers embodies the tumultuous relationship we have within ourselves and in our relations to one another.
Matilda Sutton (b.1994) is based in Newcastle upon Tyne and graduated from Newcastle University in 2019. She participated in The NewBridge Project Collective Studio programme 2020-21. Sutton recently had a solo exhibition at Vane, Gateshead, UK (2023) and Clifford Chance, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (2023). Vane presented a solo booth of Sutton's work at British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London (2023). Group exhibitions include Vane, Gateshead, UK (2022 and 2021); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2022); Quench, Margate, UK (2022) and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2021). Sutton was awarded a Newcastle University Final Year Student Prize in 2019, an Artist Bursary in 2021 and was selected for the solo Newcastle Arcus Pride Art Show in 2023.
Matilda Sutton's solo exhibition with Pipeline will open in January 2024.
