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KITTI!
Kitti by Catriona Paterson
2001 Degree Show - Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland
The 2001 Degree Show at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland
was much the same as any other display of graduating art student work,
full of the usual explorations into life/death, shape/form and space/time.
While many works adhered to that great art exhibition tradition of wallowing
in self-loathing/pity and angst, others were executed with varied amounts
of skill in their particular medium and did manage to stir up the vital
mix of ideas and/or feelings that can make art (either professional or
student work) successful as a means of communication and self-exploration,
which, arguably, is the point of an exhibition.
One such work, which seemed to jump on my shoulders and whisper in my
ear long after I had left the show, was Kitti by artist Catriona
Paterson. Billed as "The Perfect Pop Artist", Kitti was an
interesting concoction consisting of part: photo, part: music, part: installation,
part: web and part: performance art.
Displayed in the loosely defined, pin-pointless, Tapestry Arts Department,
the piece consisted of various elements that seemed to shrink smaller
and smaller until they set tiny seeds into my psyche, causing me to think
seriously about something that I hadn't even given a thought about a second
before.
While her Pop-Starry tune and music video are sufficiently fluffy and
her merchandise looks and costs the price. Kitti's web site does
little in the way of effectively making her point, it's hard to know,
by way of the site, if it's still a parody. It does however serve as source
of history and post-show future, should you grow to love her character
(or, God forbid, her music). The site, along with posters white washed
Pop-Style around the city, makes for a nice way of taking the art piece
out of the exhibition space and into our lives.
Yet, it's her Degree Show installation which hit the mark and scarred
my expectations. It consisted of a room, that was only entered through
a smaller than average doorway, which was a detailed mock-up of a teenage
girl's bedroom. The room, a kaleidoscopic feast of Teeny-Bop images and
knick-knacks, included a small make-up table, bed and computer with Kitti's
music video looping endlessly. The walls were covered with posters of
Kitti in various poses from her fake teen magazine spreads. Her
trademark-pending platinum blonde wig, red-tinted heart shaped sunglasses,
dollar sign half-shirt, mini-skirt and knee socks are all over the camera
with lollipop smiles and "gosh-me?" spread legs. On the shag-carpeted
floors were magazine layouts of young scantily clad models from the pages
of today as well as those of Kitti. I strained to completely pour
over all of the pieces of the Pop cultured moment.
Then, while standing inside this awkwardly proportioned room with low-slung
ceilings, I felt a rush of claustrophobia, a flush of nervousness, a lightning
brush with perversion. This intense bombardment of Kitti's soft-core
Pop-Flavoured images began to change my perception. For, although I had
cerebrally understood the point that the artist was overtly making about
the sexual nature of Teeny-Pop, I now started to feel it. Kitti's
young woman body now seemed to belie her chubby cheeked face and she took
on a sexuality that both troubled me and intrigued me. It felt very wrong
to be feeling sexual in this teenage girls room but I couldn't help it.
I began to wonder if it wasn't something in myself that needed to be looked
into.
It was when I noticed a crumpled girls t-shirt, underwear and socks lying
half-hidden under the bed, that I came to fully understand my feelings.
A youngster's article of clothing that would normally never give me another
thought were now the knock on the head that I needed. For these images
of Kitti which were spread on the walls and undulating on the screen
had not only caused me to think of her as sexual, but the fictitious
little girl that lived in that room as well.
It was a sudden exposing of the subconscious and the twisted energy of
images, the power of which I found to be quite a revealing experience
both socially/personally.
Now, some might say that this conclusion is a no-brainer, that anybody
could represent the fact that we're capturing younger and younger girls
in a sex-tinted lens. Yet, Catriona Paterson's clever Pop Parody, her
fantasy dress-up play time filled with pictures and songs, works for the
simple reason that it made me feel just how scary it is to be scary. And
if you're not afraid of that feeling, you might want to go get looked
at.
JEFF JOHNSON - 11 July 2001
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