Hattie Malcomson

About

Hattie Malcomson (b.1998) is an artist living and working in London. After graduating from the University of Brighton in 2020, she was the recipient of the Cass Art X Phoenix studio award. This included a year’s studio residency where she worked on her first solo show ‘Sisters, Sisters, Sisters’ that opened in April 2021 at New Art Projects in London as well as one later that year ‘I’m like other girls’, at Phoenix Art Space. Since then she has exhibited in different parts of the UK, as well as LA.

My paintings consist of female characters who act to represent figures, archetypes or ideas from myth. Often painted in humorous ways, and in an act of subversion, they attempt to mimic and mock the representation of women in western historical stories. These stories are active and have fed off themselves century after century, morphing into different versions of the same thing. I am interested in making connections between past and present as the myths are brought into a new context and the divinity or evil that they have projected onto women in this madonna-whore dichotomy are unpacked. Sensuality exists next to grotesque iconography as the paintings simultaneously attract and repulse. I use my own body to speak to the present time as I perform these characters, or wear them as a mask. This is to say that although ridiculous and absurd, these stories are still present, despite our arrogance to think they are tiresome and banal ideas of the past.