Viewing In Heat: Plum Cloutman and Nettle Grellier at Blue Shop Cottage

Women celebrating women. This joint exhibition of paintings and drawings is described by Ocki Magill (Director at BSC) as a celebration of the ‘raw femme that consumer culture would rather us not see.’ Together, contemporary artists Plum Cloutman and Nettle Grellier have directed the shift away from the male-gaze picture-perfect imagery of women in the media and achieve an unabashed expression of female sexuality in all its forms.

And these works don’t hide away: there is vulgarity, beauty, grotesqueness, delight. Addressing themes of trauma and survival, they’re a reminder of what Cloutman describes as ‘the antidotal properties of funny art’. Like the nude figure riding the slug in ‘I’ve lost my fear of being left’ (Grellier, 2021), the artists tread an often-fantastical line between the humorous and the absurd – one where filters and airbrushes suddenly appear no more real.