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REPRESENTED ARTISTS   BERTILLE BAK GWENAEL BELANGER DEXTER DYMOKE ANTTI LAITINEN
    MARKO MAETAMM YUDI NOOR OLIVER PIETSCH KIM RUGG
    BETTINA SAMSON SINTA WERNER    

KATE STREET
Little Death
21 NOVEMBER – 21 DECEMBER 2008

VIEW WORK



Story of Orchis in three parts, 2008, Watercolour and pen on paper, (3) x 114 x 84 cm

NETTIE HORN is pleased to present the first UK solo exhibition by British artist Kate Street; featuring a selection of wall-based sculptures, the finale to her Little Death series, and a collection of botanical drawings.

Kate Street uses words, proverbs and mythologies as a starting point to create sculptures tinged with a tongue-in-cheek approach to language. The results are often sculptures, or rather assemblages, that consist of intricately crafted components tinged with sombre qualities. Street uses the form of the funeral wreath, constructed as a response to loss and sublimation, to explore the boundaries surrounding the dual aspect of her work – the associations created between the imagery and her search for meaning through communication and language.

Striking a balance between the theatrical and the absurd, her series Little Death - originating from the French term for orgasm “petite mort” - illustrates the way in which Street laces her work with parallels between ideas of death and the romantic. These carefully crafted floral tributes are intended to mark the demise of someone or something, paradoxically signifying an end, and yet building a monument to the departed. Reoccurring motifs such as flowers, birds, trinkets and hearts are used to symbolise and subvert typical ideas of romance – being at first glance a baroque and intricate object that on close inspection begins to play with our most basic insecurities and discomforts.

Street’s botanically themed drawings play on bizarre taxonomies and classifications, creating new hybrid forms that simultaneously recall anatomical studies and mutated Victorian etchings. The Orchis series, which evoke an ancient Greek belief that orchids sprung from the spilt semen of mating animals, once again illustrates Street’s interest in notions of desire, longing, and the absurdity that often accompanies it. These considered drawings, which can be read as a beautiful Memento mori, reflect once again parallels between nature and artifice.

 

Kate Street was born in 1979 and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2004. Past exhibitions include Darkness Visible at the Galway Arts Centre, Ireland; Et pendant ce temps… at NETTIE HORN, London; Sex & Witchcraft at Transition gallery, London; Wintry at Lounge gallery, London; the Celeste art prize, London; New Romantic at the Hospital Gallery, London.

 





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