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03:00 Matilda Sutton: Dissolution
Back in August I visited Vane Gallery to talk with Matilda Sutton about her new body of work. We talked about materials, meanings, and hair. We talked about cultural dualisms, and we asked, what are they good for? It was a great conversation and I’m thankful for both Vane Gallery and Matilda Sutton for helping me make it happen. Enjoy.
Mark Bletcher
Artist and co-founder of Minutes.
Matilda Sutton, The Baptism, 2023, acrylic on collaged Lokta paper, 120x190cm. Photo: Colin Davison, Credit Vane Gallery
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00:00
Mark
How did you get started with the work for the show? What where your major influences?
Matilda
Yeah, so, the show is called Dissolution - and when I made the work, I wanted to explore this sense of being in a body, and being a human, but exploring the boundaries of yourself, and your body, and how that might be faulty. Exploring the boundaries of your body as something not hard or singular.
And I started think about - I guess in the same way that all the work previously is about questioning the binary cultural dualisms around gender, and sexuality, and species, and things like that. I started to ask the same questions about the body?
And very quickly the work became about - that feeling of having a body, and the constant effort to contain it in various ways. How to negotiate the edge of yourself – but also the tension between those things, and the need for connection in physical ways, and in other ways.
So that was the kind of stuff I was thinking about when putting the show together. At the same time, I was doing a fair bit of reading which influenced the work. I was reading a history of cleanliness and purity. I really liked some of the imagery in these books that described bathing garments. The idea of clean white linen undergarments. An idea that has become persistent in human cultures. This strange ideal we created. Bathing garments for women to wash themselves, but also to cover their entire naked body. So, they couldn’t even see their own self.
It's quite a horrible thing in a way, but it’s also quite beautiful. It looks nice. So, I guess, my show is playing with that idea. I wanted to keep playing with those ideas and swapping them around, hairiness, animalness, carnalness … I think I’m just making up words at this point.
Mark
Haha, no no no. I glad you said it, because when I was walking around the show, one of the things that I wanted to ask you about, was the word you just mentioned, hairiness. Because, I feel like your brushstrokes, your painting, your way of working, has this language of hairiness that you don’t really see elsewhere. Like, nearly, all over the show you see hair. The figures are hairy, the backgrounds are hairy, the objects are hairy, and even the trees are hairy. Where does that come from? Is that something that you are interested in?
Matilda
Yeah, I mean. Sometimes there are different ways you can talk about your practice. You can choose many themes, but they will all always be true. One of the themes I can talk about almost endlessly is hairiness. I didn’t always paint. In the first couple of years of my degree I hardly painted, I did things like drawing and collage, but I think the work has always been hairy. When I started to paint more, I used the paint to make hairy things. I guess it’s always been a part of my work.
Mark
Because hairiness does a few things. When you see hairy figures, it immediately makes you think of animals, humans, and the cross between them. It recalls the fine edge between cuteness or disgust, or cleanliness, or scariness. Fluffy and cute, or sparce and sickly.
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The Baptism, Detail.
Matilda
Yeah, last year I made some work, and the figures were really furry. So fluffy. It almost looked like they had furry shorts on. Kind of like this one here. I think you said this one reminds you of a moth?
Mark
Yeah.
![Matilda Sutton, She Thinks She’d Blow our Minds I, 2022, ink and charcoal on paper, 58x42cm. Photo: Colin Davison]()
(Matilda Sutton, She Thinks She’d Blow our Minds I, 2022, ink and charcoal on paper, 58x42cm. Photo: Colin Davison)
Matilda
I kind of thought of her, as like, a bird person. I remember thinking ‘I’ve got to stop just drawing hairy ladies” and try something else.
Mark
Do you see them all as the same person, these figures?
Matilda
Yes and no. It’s all sort of jumbled up. They could all be the same person, but they could also be something else… but... well… they do all have my face.
Mark
They do kind of look like you! I’m glad you said that. They all look out as well. They are very confrontational. It looks like they are aware of the viewer.
Matilda
Generally speaking, yeah. They all look back at the viewer.
That choice is about wanting them to be in the space with you. You’re not looking in on a scene. They are with you in the space. Whereas the drawings don’t do that - because of the scale. The paintings are life-size whereas the drawings are a scene that you look in on.
Mark
When you're creating the drawings how to do you find these scenes?
![]()
Matilda Sutton, ‘Dissolution’ @ Vane Gallery, 2023, installation view. Photo: Colin Davison
Matilda
They're like a mixture of things. They cross-pollinate. Little bits from myth, modern fiction, and anything I’m reading. Alongside that, there will be a set of things I am thinking about, body stuff. But generally, when I start drawing it’s because of something I have seen or something that has happened in day-to-day life. I’ll create a simple sketch, or sometimes I just note what I saw on my phone, and then work from that. Often it will go from this note to being a larger painting.
Mark
Can I ask you about what you paint on?
Matilda
Yeah. So, when I used to paint, I would use brown paper and cartridge and layer them up. But, for this new work I wanted to try something that had a bit more lightness and softness to it like cloth. This is lokta paper. It’s handmade. It’s quite thin, but strong. It’s often used in bookbinding. It’s easy to manipulate.
Mark
Wow, yeah. It gives the work a different texture. The texture almost relates to the figures. It’s a bit scabby but also warm? It’s got this beautiful push and pull. It’s interesting and great to see. Often painters will carefully sand down their canvas and try to make this ‘perfect image’ and its great to see work that goes in a different direction.
![]()
The Baptism, Detail.
Matilda
Yeah, and it feels like that when I’m working with these paintings. It feels messy in a good way. I don’t enjoy painting on canvas. It feels like it resists in a way I don’t enjoy. But then, working on paper, it has this smoothness, but it also buckles and rips. And if it breaks, I can simply patch it up.
Mark
Yeah, it’s nice. It feels good. It almost feels, political? Visually, it reminds me of work that has an obvious political dimension, like banners, fabrics, and posters. The kind of stuff you would see at protests or gatherings. Work that is often collaborative and messy. Warped and damaged… and if you did bind and pull these works, these painting, onto a canvas frame they would be very different, they might be less, political? Does that make sense?
Matilda
Yeah, yeah. Totally. It’s about them being an object. It’s that relationship to textiles. It’s important to me to choose to not to paint on canvas. And to use textiles in other parts of my practice where it’s seen as its own thing, rather then hidden behind an image.
Being on paper, they also look like then can rip and degrade over time. Its less of a secure object. It’s not as clean as many other ‘art objects.’
Mark
Yeah, it’s not easy to put it in a box?
Matilda
Yeah.
How did you get started with the work for the show? What where your major influences?
Matilda
Yeah, so, the show is called Dissolution - and when I made the work, I wanted to explore this sense of being in a body, and being a human, but exploring the boundaries of yourself, and your body, and how that might be faulty. Exploring the boundaries of your body as something not hard or singular.
And I started think about - I guess in the same way that all the work previously is about questioning the binary cultural dualisms around gender, and sexuality, and species, and things like that. I started to ask the same questions about the body?
And very quickly the work became about - that feeling of having a body, and the constant effort to contain it in various ways. How to negotiate the edge of yourself – but also the tension between those things, and the need for connection in physical ways, and in other ways.
So that was the kind of stuff I was thinking about when putting the show together. At the same time, I was doing a fair bit of reading which influenced the work. I was reading a history of cleanliness and purity. I really liked some of the imagery in these books that described bathing garments. The idea of clean white linen undergarments. An idea that has become persistent in human cultures. This strange ideal we created. Bathing garments for women to wash themselves, but also to cover their entire naked body. So, they couldn’t even see their own self.
It's quite a horrible thing in a way, but it’s also quite beautiful. It looks nice. So, I guess, my show is playing with that idea. I wanted to keep playing with those ideas and swapping them around, hairiness, animalness, carnalness … I think I’m just making up words at this point.
Mark
Haha, no no no. I glad you said it, because when I was walking around the show, one of the things that I wanted to ask you about, was the word you just mentioned, hairiness. Because, I feel like your brushstrokes, your painting, your way of working, has this language of hairiness that you don’t really see elsewhere. Like, nearly, all over the show you see hair. The figures are hairy, the backgrounds are hairy, the objects are hairy, and even the trees are hairy. Where does that come from? Is that something that you are interested in?
Matilda
Yeah, I mean. Sometimes there are different ways you can talk about your practice. You can choose many themes, but they will all always be true. One of the themes I can talk about almost endlessly is hairiness. I didn’t always paint. In the first couple of years of my degree I hardly painted, I did things like drawing and collage, but I think the work has always been hairy. When I started to paint more, I used the paint to make hairy things. I guess it’s always been a part of my work.
Mark
Because hairiness does a few things. When you see hairy figures, it immediately makes you think of animals, humans, and the cross between them. It recalls the fine edge between cuteness or disgust, or cleanliness, or scariness. Fluffy and cute, or sparce and sickly.
The Baptism, Detail.
Matilda
Yeah, last year I made some work, and the figures were really furry. So fluffy. It almost looked like they had furry shorts on. Kind of like this one here. I think you said this one reminds you of a moth?
Mark
Yeah.
(Matilda Sutton, She Thinks She’d Blow our Minds I, 2022, ink and charcoal on paper, 58x42cm. Photo: Colin Davison)
Matilda
I kind of thought of her, as like, a bird person. I remember thinking ‘I’ve got to stop just drawing hairy ladies” and try something else.
Mark
Do you see them all as the same person, these figures?
Matilda
Yes and no. It’s all sort of jumbled up. They could all be the same person, but they could also be something else… but... well… they do all have my face.
Mark
They do kind of look like you! I’m glad you said that. They all look out as well. They are very confrontational. It looks like they are aware of the viewer.
Matilda
Generally speaking, yeah. They all look back at the viewer.
That choice is about wanting them to be in the space with you. You’re not looking in on a scene. They are with you in the space. Whereas the drawings don’t do that - because of the scale. The paintings are life-size whereas the drawings are a scene that you look in on.
Mark
When you're creating the drawings how to do you find these scenes?
Matilda Sutton, ‘Dissolution’ @ Vane Gallery, 2023, installation view. Photo: Colin Davison
Matilda
They're like a mixture of things. They cross-pollinate. Little bits from myth, modern fiction, and anything I’m reading. Alongside that, there will be a set of things I am thinking about, body stuff. But generally, when I start drawing it’s because of something I have seen or something that has happened in day-to-day life. I’ll create a simple sketch, or sometimes I just note what I saw on my phone, and then work from that. Often it will go from this note to being a larger painting.
Mark
Can I ask you about what you paint on?
Matilda
Yeah. So, when I used to paint, I would use brown paper and cartridge and layer them up. But, for this new work I wanted to try something that had a bit more lightness and softness to it like cloth. This is lokta paper. It’s handmade. It’s quite thin, but strong. It’s often used in bookbinding. It’s easy to manipulate.
Mark
Wow, yeah. It gives the work a different texture. The texture almost relates to the figures. It’s a bit scabby but also warm? It’s got this beautiful push and pull. It’s interesting and great to see. Often painters will carefully sand down their canvas and try to make this ‘perfect image’ and its great to see work that goes in a different direction.
The Baptism, Detail.
Matilda
Yeah, and it feels like that when I’m working with these paintings. It feels messy in a good way. I don’t enjoy painting on canvas. It feels like it resists in a way I don’t enjoy. But then, working on paper, it has this smoothness, but it also buckles and rips. And if it breaks, I can simply patch it up.
Mark
Yeah, it’s nice. It feels good. It almost feels, political? Visually, it reminds me of work that has an obvious political dimension, like banners, fabrics, and posters. The kind of stuff you would see at protests or gatherings. Work that is often collaborative and messy. Warped and damaged… and if you did bind and pull these works, these painting, onto a canvas frame they would be very different, they might be less, political? Does that make sense?
Matilda
Yeah, yeah. Totally. It’s about them being an object. It’s that relationship to textiles. It’s important to me to choose to not to paint on canvas. And to use textiles in other parts of my practice where it’s seen as its own thing, rather then hidden behind an image.
Being on paper, they also look like then can rip and degrade over time. Its less of a secure object. It’s not as clean as many other ‘art objects.’
Mark
Yeah, it’s not easy to put it in a box?
Matilda
Yeah.
12:17
Recording Ends