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Artist Statement:
Childhood is a recurring theme
in my work, I try to dispel
Fairy Tale mythologies,
stripping back to the bare
bones of experience and
uncovering some kind of
underlying truth using
personal narratives alongside
subverted imagery. I use the
familiar and the nostalgic as
a trigger, but disrupt the
reading. In recent works the
family unit is transformed
into animals, either drawn,
painted or constructed as 3D
textiles; malformed, battered
and bruised to evoke the
darker side of family life. I
am preoccupied with our
relationships to trigger
objects, memory, nostalgia and
psychosis.
My work is very ‘hand-made’ –
it can look laborious and
clumsy, scrawled with hand
written text and the faded
words from an old ribbon
typewriter. I want the work to
have a wounded ‘authenticity’
and try to use evocative image
and text/process to tap into
peoples collective memory. The
type from my old battered
type-writer reminds me of
discovering my mothers secret
poems. The pattern of simple
animal shapes on the
Phrenology III head is taken
from a 1970s toy pattern book
and has that bitter sweet
nostalgic quality. Modern life
requires that everything is
clean and shiny and safe,
kitemarked and numbered, my
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Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
Solo exhibitions
2008 Frou-Frou, Unit 9
Gallery, Bradford
2007 Poison, south Square
Gallery, Bradford
2006 AtoB, Gallerija Celica,
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Group exhibitions
2008/9 Projekt Dodai, Skuc
Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2008 Ship of Fools, Yarra
Sculpture Gallery, Melbourne,
Australia
2008 Flesh, Yorkshire Craft
Centre, Bradford (prize
winner)
2008 SCOPE ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Public commissions
2008 Shipley Town Centre Stone
& Ironwork Sculpture, Shipley
Council, Shipley Town Centre
2005 'Home Is ....' Textile
Project - Cabinet of
Curiosities, English Heritage,
Lincoln
2005 With This Pencil I Can .
. Outdoor Table Commission,
Bradford Museums & Galleries,
Brackenhall Countryside
Centre, Baildon, Bradford
2003 City Centre Banners,
Lincoln City Council, Lincoln
...
Further Information
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Reviews for Morwenna Catt:
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As my mother would say: Morwenna Catt is "not a happy bunny." Nor are the embroidered cloth rabbit sculptures she makes in order to 'take recognizable artefacts and tales from childhood and subvert them into something malformed, battered and bruised; to evoke that darker side of childhood experience.'
Like the anthropomorphised playthings children clutch, Catt's rabbit heads are more human than animal. They have long floppy ears but human sculls and basic, pretty, feminine features. They also are covered in ragged embroidery, resembling elaborate tattoos or bruises.
All beloved toys earn scars from children's careless love. But these bunnies' debased appearance belies more malevolent and purposeful abuse than the normal wear and tear. Catt's stuffed toys provoke adult
empathy. And she explains the bunnies' sad sagas in her 'Poison' series of acrylic and hand stitching canvases. In these Tim Burton-like paintings, Catt establishes the bloody, tragic back-story for her stuffed toys' trauma.
More common is the mildly distressingly, yet still disillusioning, childhood experience Catt evokes in her series of X-ray photograph-on-light-box works. In these, she exposes the corrupted innards of stuffed animals, as they might appear when passing through an airport X-ray. Children traveling are often upset when separated from a cherished stuffed toy, whose trip into the X-ray underscores its existence as an inanimate object different from its empathetic owner. Airport security searches toys for drugs, weapons and other counter band but Catt's toys contain messages aimed at the adults who tamper with children and childhood symbols. One such horsey hides a key and padlock, along with the words "betrayal," in its belly. Here, as in her other work, Catt's creatures' pain is palpable but as inarticulate and heartbreaking as all childhood hurts.
Ana Finel Honigman
ANA FINEL HONIGMAN is a critic, PhD candidate in art history at Oxford University and Senior London Correspondent for the Saatchi Gallery's online magazine. She is Style.com's Arts correspondent, Arts Editor of Alef, a Berlin correspondent for asmallworld.net and contributes regularly to such publications as Artforum.com, Art in America,TANK, Dazed & Confused, Sleek and British Vogue.
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