LUCY CHETCUTI

All Fours

31 March - 9 April 2023, CCAS Manuka

This exhibition of drawing based artworks and paintings is an investigation into mark making, which pursues my passion to animate the surface and celebrate different qualities of line. All while featuring a cheerful interplay of colour and light. 

I use automatic drawing techniques to explore a range of new marks. I have also featured monoprinted gestures, shifting between the predictable and the unpredictable. The marks I apply to the ground react within this framework to create a tension between spontaneity and intention, fixed gesture and the innocuous uncontrolled line and ultimately give life to the surface.

Works in this exhibition arise from the compositional prompt of a four section grid. For me, the grid functions as an enabling constraint within the picture plane, which produces more creative possibilities. I consider 'the edge' as a fundamental visual threshold or boundary that can be broached, conversed with, or erased.

The geometric grid is a structure that resonates throughout our everyday environments, memories and worlds. In my search for the exciting feeling of freshness in something mundane, different qualities of line are discovered. 

These works have been created with the support of the CAPO All Insure Emerging Artist Award 2021 which has enabled me to begin to explore new materials such as encaustic wax.

Image: Lucy Chetcuti Intersection of something or other, 2022, graphite and oil on polycotton, 91 x 90cm Photo by David Paterson