Lydia Pettit
Lydia Pettit is an artist from Baltimore, USA living and working in London, UK. Pettit’s works explore the experience of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the politics of the body, using self portraiture as a vehicle to process and communicate. The body is a host to trauma, and becomes a battleground in itself in the push and pull between recovery and regression, love and disgust, tenderness and callousness. To live with PTSD is to be a haunted house; spectres of the past infiltrate the halls... Who's there? Turn the corner and suddenly, a flash of fear, pain, creeping dread and shame. The Artist uses direct references from horror as avatars for different parts of the psyche -Anger as a crazed slasher, Fear as the helpless victim, and Desire as a rabid wild woman. Putting on these personas through self portraiture speaks to the dark comedy of living with mental illness, the ups and the downs, and the complications of recovery. Her works are confrontational depictions of her own inward gaze, forcing the viewer to reckon with the realities of her body and mind, and their own viewpoints on the struggles women face with sexual abuse, trauma, body politics, and mental health.
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Bitches In Heat
Lydia Pettit & Olivia Sterling 13 Sep - 13 Oct 2024Read more -
And this skin of mine, to live again a second time
2 - 23 Jun 2022Guts Gallery is pleased to present a new group exhibition in late Spring 2022, the first group show in our new permanent HQ in London. ‘And this skin of mine,...Read more
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Lydia Pettit & Olivia Sterling: ‘Bitches in Heat’
Eddy Frankel, Time Out, 19 Sep 2024 -
Artists Lydia Pettit and Olivia Sterling in Conversation: On Self Portraiture, The Void and Bitches In Heat
Gina Tonic, Polyesterzine, 23 Jul 2024 -
Who. What. Where? No. 82
HUNGER writers, Hunger, 18 Sep 2024 -
This exhibition celebrates feral female desire
Millen Brown-Ewens, Dazed, 13 Sep 2024 -
Art shows to leave the house for this June
Ashleigh Kane, Dazed , 2 Jun 2022
B. 1991 in Towson, Maryland. Lives and works in London.
Education
2018-2020 Royal College of Art, MA Painting, London, United Kingdom
2014 Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, USA Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting; Photography Concentration
Solo Exhibitions
2023 In Your Anger, I See Fear, Galerie Judin, Berlin, DE
2022 Introductions: Lydia Pettit, White Cube, London, UK
2021 The Well, Galerie Sebastien Bertrand, Geneva, CH
2018 TENDER FLEX, Artscape Artist Run Art Fair, Baltimore, MD, USA BIG SEXY, School 33, Baltimore, MD, USA
2017 Murmurs: New Paintings by Lydia Pettit, Hotel Indigo, Baltimore, MD, USA
Group Exhibitions
2024 BITCHES IN HEAT, Guts Gallery, London, UK
2024 Prophetic Dreams, Kutlesa Gallery, Goldau, CH
2024 The Arcadian Dream, Spurs Gallery, Beijing, CN
2023 Sirani, Galerie Judin, Berlin, DE
2023 LOOKING LIKE FIRE, Sim Smith, London, UK
2023 I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, Dinner Gallery, New York, USA
2023 The Object Stares Back, Tube Culture Gallery, Milan, IT
2022 GIALLO!, Trafalgar Avenue, London, UK
2022 Portraiture: An Ongoing Story, Galerie Sebastien Bertrand, Geneva, CH
2022 And this Skin of Mine, To Live a Second Time, Guts Gallery, London, UK
2021 New Contemporaries 2021, South London Gallery, London, UK
2021 New Contemporaries 2021, Firstsite, Colchester, UK
2021 IRL, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, UK
2020 London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK 50/50, Fold Gallery, London, UK
2020 Royal College of Art Show, Kristen Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK
2020 Tomorrow: London, White Cube, London, UK
2020 Portraits and Some Standing Figures, Galerie Sebastien Bertrand, Geneva, CH
2020 Signature Art Prize Gala, Bankside Hotel, London, UK
2019 Bodies: Self & Sex, No. 20 Arts, London, UK
2019 Sunny Art Prize 2019, Sunny Art Centre, London, UK
2019 A RAW GARDEN, Pinch Projects, Fitzrovia Gallery, London, UK
2019 RBA Rising Stars Exhibition, Royal 2019 Overseas League, London, UK
2019 Painters on the Other Side, Dyson Gallery, London, UK
2019 When We Once Were Someone, YNGSPC.com
2018 DEEP STRETCH, Field Projects, New York, NY, USA
2017 Artists on the Other Side, Cade Gallery, Arnold, MD, USA
Honours, Awards and Grants
2020 Jealous Prize, Jealous Gallery and Print Studio, London, UK
2019 Royal Society of British Artists Rome Fellowship Semifinalist, London, UK
2018 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize Semifinalist, Baltimore, MD, USA
2016 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for Representational Art, Quebec, Canada
2015 Alumni Residency Grant at Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Ireland
2014 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for representational Art, Quebec, Canada