London Paint Club

Vanessa Mitter

In her paintings and performances, Vanessa Mitter is interested in interrogating the history, particularly, of Expressionist painting and of the gesture. The making is very physical. The canvas is moved around, laid on the floor, then the wall, often remade or scored over, obliterated and then painted over again. Often, paintings are buried underneath other paintings. There is a narrative being referenced, but it is often hidden and autobiographical. Mitter uses layers of paint and collage, overlaid then with pen and oil stick. The making is instinctive and accident driven, often teetering on the edge of what she believes is abject failure. This tightrope is important. The painting has its own life, and leads the way. Mitter views this as a process of alchemy; a transformative process.

Alice Butler (Frieze Writer’s Prize Winner, 2012) writes that: ‘In Vanessa Mitter’s paintings, the personal is treated as a pliant material, a source of affect and investigation, but also of fiction and performance. Collage, paint and pigment find a way onto the canvas in ephemeral expressive gestures. There is an abject narrative at play – of childbirth, loss, fertility/infertility – but it is a narrative that wanders in and around the artifice of the material’ and ‘The textural ways in which Mitter appropriates her own work, working and re-working the surface, with the addition of a swathe of fabric, a ripped sheet of paper, or an expressive gesture of paint, becomes a signifier of the passing of time’. 

Vanessa Mitter

On Fertile Ground – Implosion, 2021

Oil and pen on canvas

130 cm x 95 cm

Price Available Upon Request

© Vanessa Mitter

Vanessa Mitter

On Fertile Ground – Hybrid, 2021 

Oil on canvas

130 cm x 95 cm

Price Available Upon Request

© Vanessa Mitter

Vanessa Mitter

Hysteria, 2021

Oil on canvas

150 cm x 120 cm

Price Available Upon Request

© Vanessa Mitter

ALL SALES PROCEEDS GO DIRECTLY TO THE ARTIST.
TO ENQUIRE ABOUT ANY OF THE WORKS IN THIS PRESENTATION CLICK HERE

Artist Profile

Vanessa Mitter

Born 1982 in London, UK

Lives and works in London, UK

Education

MA – Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art, UAL, London, England, 2010 

Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art, UAL, London, England, 2009

BA Honours Fine Art – Painting, Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, UAL, London, England

BTEC Higher National Diploma – Foundation Studies in Art and Design, Kingston University, Surrey, England

Solo Exhibitions

2017

Arthouse1 Gallery, I Am A Beautiful Monster, London, England

2016

Unit G Gallery, Unquiet Brides, London, England

Group Exhibitions

Goose Summer online exhibition, curated by Hannah Murgatroyd and Martyn Cross, London

With Love, Paint Talk online exhibition, curated by Mark Connolly 

Objects of Desire, ASC Project Space, London

This Year’s Model, Studio 1.1 Gallery, London

Mother Art Prize, Mimosa House, London

Creekside Open, selected by Brian Griffiths, APT Gallery, London

Rules of Freedom, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London

Lore of the Land, curated by David Harrison, Churchgate Gallery, Somerset

Frivolous Convulsions, Turf Projects, Croydon

You Are Here, Stockport War Memorial Museum, Manchester

Awards, Fellowships, and Grants

2018

Mother Art Prize, London – shortlisted

 

2017

The Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize, London – shortlisted

 

2015

Hackney Wicked Art Prize, London – joint winner

 

2010

Red Mansion Foundation Art Prize, London – shortlisted

Gilbert de Botton Art Prize, London – shortlisted

Press

Mother Art Prize catalogue

You Are Here catalogue

Lore of the Land Catalogue

Frivolous Convulsions catalogue (Arts Council funded)

Cadaverous in Croydon, review by Paul Carey-Kent

Death Animated, review of Frivolous Convulsions by Tom Carrao

Strange Attraction Catalogue

Frieze Magazine review of de Kooning de Kooning de Kooning

Works

Vanessa Mitter

On Fertile Ground – Implosion, 2021

Oil and pen on canvas

130 cm x 95 cm

Price Available Upon Request

© Vanessa Mitter

Vanessa Mitter

On Fertile Ground – Hybrid, 2021 

Oil on canvas

130 cm x 95 cm

Price Available Upon Request

© Vanessa Mitter

Vanessa Mitter

Hysteria, 2021

Oil on canvas

150 cm x 120 cm

Price Available Upon Request

© Vanessa Mitter

Unless otherwise stated, artworks © The Artist. © 2021 London Paint Club

Work Enquiry