ANDRÉ STITT

South

15|10 - 20|11| 2021

TEN is thrilled to present ‘South’, André Stitt’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. A pandemic-paused exhibition, the timing seems pre-destined. After a year which saw mandated daily walks around the block deepen our connection to our square mile, Stitt’s subject of lived-experience has a fuller familiarity.

For a number of years, Stitt’s love of brutalist modernism and architecture of the 20th century has been at the forefront of his paintings. New Towns, estates, tower blocks and fading joys of civic concrete - and the shape of these buildings and places both structurally and humanly.

But ‘South’ is deeper, more personal.

Stitt’s childhood home on the Seymour Hill estate in South Belfast is one part of his subject. A 1960/70’s concrete estate, brutal with the tensions of The Troubles. Penrhys estate in Ferndale, South Wales is the other. A sink estate of remarkable architecture, falling to pieces. Both locations mirror each other - city-planned council estates, new social housing for a post-war ‘new future’, not living up to the dream. The gritty, dilapidated and vandalised is the backdrop to lived-in homes.

And the painted surface reflects this. A punctured, burned and black-marked background to angular structures and flat panes of walls and roofs. The oil stick is heavy and thick, the spray-paint hinting at graffiti - harsh, dark marks on top of bright, hopeful colours, with the buildings slap bang centre-stage, on top of it all. And that, there, is the crux - Stitt’s abstract paintings of architectural structures are about people - people existing and living in their local surroundings.

We experience these locations through Stitt’s own lived experience, and of his own walks around the block.

Andre Stitt was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1958. He studied at Ulster Polytechnic + Belfast College of Art + Design, Ulster University 1976-1980. He is currently professor of fine art at Cardiff School of Art + Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Art.

Working almost exclusively as a action-based + interdisciplinary artist from 1976-2002, Stitt gained an International reputation for cutting edge, provocative + politically challenging work. A predominate theme in his artistic output is that of communities + their dissolution often relating to trauma, conflict + art as a redemptive proposition. His ‘live’ performance + installation works have been presented at major museums, galleries and sites specific throughout the world.

Although stitt’s reputation was founded on his international career as a live artist, he originally trained as a painter in his home town of Belfast. In 2008 he was awarded a major Creative Wales award to develop his painting practice + has since radically changed his output to painting. His recent works are inspired by architectural blue plans + the structural + emotive qualities of the post war brutalist housing estate where he grew up.

Stitt's work has been included in exhibitions at PS1, New York 2000, Venice Biennale 2005, Baltic Contemporary Art Centre, England 2005, Bangkok Art + Culture Centre, 2008, Galerie Lehtinen, Berlin 2011, John Moores 2012, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.