Nacheal Catnott: Redemption

26th July 2024 – 2nd August 2024
Opening: 6-9pm Thursday 25th July 2024

Nacheal Catnott is a British-Caribbean artist and documentary filmmaker whose work delves into themes of race, migration, and cross-cultural diversity within the UK. Utilising traditional documentary film techniques alongside sculpture, performance, photography, and poetry—Catnott has gained recognition for her innovative use of yams, an Afro-Caribbean staple food, in her sculptures. These sculptures metaphorically symbolise diversity, the presence of Black people, and diasporic connections in Britain.

“As I regain the strength of my mind the histories of my native ancestral lands become clearer to me. As I cut and stack the Yam I remember. Once beneath the grounds taken from us now harvested and cultivated to be sold beyond the shores like we once were. Back to those shores, we must go. The shores are where we must stand. A Redemption is the only plan.”

Catnott's end-of-residency solo exhibition, titled "Redemption," is a multimedia installation that integrates her yam sculptures with photography, painting and other forms of visual art. The exhibition showcases a collection of concepts and experiments she has been developing throughout her residency at Wip Space Studios. Central themes of the exhibition touch on irony, the Black Gaze, and the abstract.

The yam is employed as an ironic motif, challenging the conventions of the traditional white cube institutionalised art space. Catnott's yam sculptures stand as monuments and relics, embodying diversity and ritualism. Interested in placing Black bodies in rural British Landscapes, the photographic and visual elements explore the Black Gaze and the perception of Blackness. She says “The placement of the Black-British body within these rural landscapes is the closest environment to the native motherlands. Returning us to the sea and ports that enslaved us and we docked here from. Returning the Yam to nature and its mirrored natural habitats.”

In this exhibition, Catnott revisits painting—a medium she explored at the onset of her artistic career before focusing on themes of race and identity. Her paintings represent initial sketches of her sculptures, rendered as 2D abstract yam imagery that links to the sculptures. The exhibition's manipulation of scale and height encourages viewers to move with the artworks in a performance-like manner.

"Redemption" signifies a process of saving or regaining, and this exhibition stands as a personal testimony for Catnott. It represents a reinvigoration and refinement of their practice.

We are crowdfunding to help support the organising of the exhibition please see a link to donate here: https://gofund.me/d78e4e07