Brass Gallery is proud to present 'Minor Repairs'- a new work by Yorkshire based artist Morwenna Catt.
Minor Repairs is inspired by academic research into the behavioural characteristics of crows, examining their purported ability to recognise, judge and even bear grudges against individual humans. Morwenna weaves the words of Ted Hughes into her most recent fabrications alongside her own writing, which she incorporates into textiles, painting, drawing and light boxes.
Morwenna Catt in her own words:
"My work evolves in an almost subconscious way, creating narratives from disparate elements of text and image and working these into 2D compositions and 3D objects which are drawn, painted, stitched, or a combination of all these.
"Childhood is a recurring theme in my work. I create 'stories' that merge personal narratives with fairy tales and objects from childhood, subverting these to explore the darker side of growing up.
"Kids have always had toys and loved them till they're falling to pieces and people who engage with my work often do so because it has a kind of skewed nostalgia and seems slightly battered by experience.
"Text is important in my work, whether wire words x-rayed inside objects or faded words of poetry from an old ribbon typewriter. I cut and paste together the overheard and the found with poetry, literature and my own scribblings. Often I'll ask people for words or to write me a sentence about a particular thing.
"As I add text to a piece the process becomes less about the words and more about how it fits into the pattern of the work, becoming part of its 'scarification'.
"Aesthetically, I love the scrawl of text and stitched marks across a surface. It adds visual layers and meaning to the image. Handwriting is a very personal form of drawing and I like to play with text by embroidering it or overlaying with type.
"The new work in this exhibition began after reading an article about a piece of research at Seattle University. The research proved that crows have the ability to recognise individual human faces as kindly or dangerous to the point where they would hold grudges against people.
"This, along with 'stolen' words from Ted Hughes, found artefacts, images, texts and ramblings from sketchbooks have evolved into this new series."