The House With Only An Attic And A Basement

Artist’s Talk: 28th March, 2.30pm
Curated by Michelle Klein

The House with Only an Attic and a Basement brings together the work of two artists, painter and sculptor Pete Swann and poet Kathryn Maris, in an exhibition that explores the often unspoken and sometimes uncomfortable aspects to the human psyche.

Pete Swann’s recent works have an unsettling quality. They don’t sit easily in any of the familiar categories of artistic creation, they are fusions of painting, sculpture, assemblage and architectural model. They are “captive spaces”: three dimensional environments inhabited by people, animals, birds, familiar and unfamiliar objects, colour and abstraction.

Maris’ poems and prose are fictions that explore anxiety, intergenerational familial conflict and sexual politics. Whilst her poems evoke feelings of unease, the uncomfortable aspects of her work are balanced by wit and irony.

Pete’s works are the visual equivalent of poetry, they are interior designs of the mind. The show will include a collaborative, multi-media installation in which Swann creates a series of painted relief portraits in response to Maris’ cycle of poems, The House of Atreus, which are darkly comic glimpses of a privileged, dysfunctional family over several decades.

Pete draws on a wide range of influences and life experiences. He’s an accomplished painter, industrial designer and craftsman, a qualified linguist, chef and engineer. He was born in Hong Kong, has lived in Spain, France, the USA and in Twickenham since 1996. He paints with egg tempera, an ancient medium that requires mixing raw, powdered pigments with egg yolk, which he then applies to linen-covered wooden panels. Pete studied Engineering Product Design at Southbank University. He is the chairman of the Richmond Art Society and has recently exhibited at The Gallery, Shepherd Market, the Fountain Gallery, East Molesey and the Landmark Arts Centre, Teddington.

Kathryn Maris is an American poet, critic and curator based in London. The author of three collections of poetry and a pamphlet, Kathryn has also published work in Penguin Modern Poets 5, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Best British Poetry, The Forward Book of Poetry, Granta, The Poetry Review and Poetry. A selection from Kathryn's most recent collection, The House With Only An Attic And A Basement (Penguin UK), won the Ivan Juritz Prize for creative experiment. She teaches at the Poetry School in London and reviews for the TLS and other publications.