english filth: Cat Roissetter
The title of Cat Roissetter’s new solo exhibition at Cob Gallery, ‘English Filth’, has as much to do with the material on and with which she works – oil-soaked paper, repeatedly worked into with lines and blocks of graphite colour – as it does with a specific idea of English culture: a crusted veneer of politeness that masks a festering mass of seediness and vice.
Drawing on Roissetter’s long interest in English portraiture, ‘English Filth’ is also prompted by the strange absence of nudes from the domestic tradition – and a suspicion that this links up with an English perception of nudity as always containing some element of lewdness or depravity. No naked body without a leering observer lurking behind a newspaper or a keyhole; no gilded drawing room without a grimy backstreet peepshow somewhere nearby.
Roissetter’s fascination with scenes that are sexually charged without being conventionally ‘sexy’ is at the core of ‘English Filth’. Her models’ bloated forms, tumbling like distended cherubs across the frame, emblematise an aesthetic mode where sexuality is inevitably accompanied by some suggestion of the farcical or grotesque. Seductive and unsettling, her layered, intricate but spacious drawings combine a sheepishly childlike innocence with a muffled sense of alarm. As in a nursery rhyme or fairy tale, there is often the suggestion of some sinister force bubbling up beneath the surface: a darker truth loitering just out of view.
‘English Filth’ witnesses Roissetter’s distinctive use of oil take a new turn: formerly used mainly as a means to increase the clarity of her graphite lines, its repeated application and removal has now become integral to a distinctive atmospherics of dreamy liquidity. The effect is of a sense of hubbub and motion rippling through the imagery; of each drawing being always under construction as it resolves and dissolves before our eyes.
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Cat RoissetterMuster I, 2020Colour pencil, graphite, crayon, on olive oil primed paper900 x 640 mm
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Cat Roissetter, Feast, 2020
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Cat RoissetterStudy for King’s Maid Dream , 2020Colour pencil, graphite, crayon, on olive oil primed paper295 x 197 mm
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Cat RoissetterKing’s Maid’s Dream, 2020Colour pencil, graphite, crayon, on olive oil primed paper297 x 420 mm
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Cat RoissetterOne Lover Softly, 2020Colour pencil, graphite, crayon, on olive oil primed paper297 x 420 mm
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Cat Roissetter, Slow Poke, 2020
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Cat RoissetterThis Is A Poppy, 2019Coloured pencil, graphite, crayon on linseed, turps and cooking oil primed paper210 x 390 mm
Framed 504 x 624 mm -
Cat RoissetterGreen Goblin, 2020Coloured pencil, graphite, crayon on linseed, turps and cooking oil primed paper1275 x 1800 mm
Framed 1315 x 1835 mm -
Cat RoissetterOil Pastel Study for Painting , 2020Coloured pencil, graphite, crayon on linseed, turps and cooking oil primed paper310 x 235 mm
Framed 624 x 504 mm -
Cat RoissetterEglantine, 2020Coloured pencil, graphite, crayon on linseed, turps and cooking oil primed paper900 x 640 mm
Framed 1000 x 745 mm -
Cat RoissetterAfter Feast, 2020Coloured pencil, graphite, crayon on linseed, turps and cooking oil primed paper900 x 640 mm
Framed 1000 x 745 mm -
Cat RoissetterStudy For King's Maid Dream II, 2020Coloured pencil, graphite, crayon on linseed, turps and cooking oil primed paper415 x 30 mm
Framed 624 x 504 mm -
Cat RoissetterUntitled , 2020Coloured pencil, graphite, crayon on linseed, turps and cooking oil primed paper900 x 640 mm
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Cat RoissetterTriptych Colour Work, 2020Coloured pencil, graphite, crayon on linseed, turps and cooking oil primed paper210 x 405 mm
Framed 504 x 624 mm
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Cat Roissetter: English Filth
Claire Phillips, This Is Tomorrow , October 18, 2020 -
In her latest exhibition, Cat Roissetter creates a distorted dreamworld that playfully, but subtly reveals the seediness
Dr Christiana Spens, Studio International , September 25, 2020 -
Cat Roissetter – English Filth | A new art exhibition that plays at the edges of your perceptions
The Fall, September 17, 2020 -
TEN’S TO SEE: ‘ENGLISH FILTH’ | Cat Roissetter
Paul Toner, 10 Magazine, September 16, 2020 -
How Will the Coronavirus Crisis Affect Emerging Artists and Galleries?
Ayla Angelos, Elephant, April 22, 2020