Animalistic Tendencies

Animalistic Tendencies offers an in-depth exploration of the artist Charlotte Kingsnorth's concepts, techniques, and inquiries that have garnered her critical acclaim. The artist challenges the viewer to consider the fluidity of materiality and the boundaries between the natural and synthetic worlds. With new pieces and notable past work, Kingsnorth delves into the malleability of form, identity, and reality, showcasing functional objects including chairs in transition, engulfed sofas, and species-shifting tables.

Addressing a present moment rife with simulations Charlotte Kingsnorth invites viewers to contemplate the objects in visible states of metamorphosis. These are not simply perversions of identity but open questions. The absolute truth could be harsh and uncompromising or soft and plush in mottled velvet. The artist’s exercise in ‘character building’ continues, where she mixes existing furniture frames with new. Influenced by figurative painters such as Jenny Saville and Lucian Freud, who described their paint as body matter, Kingsnorth imbues her upholstery with something living. Chairs hand stitched, hand sculpted, anthropomorphic objects to erode distinction – of mutation and evolution, of body and form.