Nat Walpole: SweetBitter

Bird-headed women, crocodilian monsters, and chimeric demons entangle among esoteric glowing symbols of queer power.

SweetBitter is a solo exhibition of paintings by Glasgow based artist Nat Walpole, created between 2023 and 2024. Produced during a time of transformation, disruption, and ongoing renewal in the artist's life.

These paintings examine trans womanhood through an autosymbolist process of image making. Blending reference to historical painting and mythology with the formal interplay of symbols to create dreamlike scenes. Exploring experiences of desire and stigmatisation whilst leading viewers through (often fraught) interior landscapes filled with ambiguous figures, symbols, and formal gestures.

Whilst not all self-portraiture, the artist’s life and experience is refracted through these paintings’ surface. Unease within the body is given form as the works draw on elements of psychic and somatic disquiet, holding space for discomfort. Motifs, grotesques, and fanciful entities emerge from states of tension or conflict, creating spaces where these somatic, social, and ideological frictions can be processed.

The portions of art history her work usually respond to are often devoid of people we’d call trans women (beyond the occasional court record of a sex worker or depiction of a gender-bending Saint or pagan deity), but speak to patriarchal ideology. She takes a materialist trans-feminist perspective to these histories. Reflecting on the ways femininity has been stigmatised and bodies instrumentalised for re/productive labour. In her practice, the artist attempts to pick apart the way these narratives codify modern conceptions of gender, whilst imagining a trans and queer life that could transcend them.

Opening

Join us for an opening on Friday 1 November, 6pm - 9pm.

At 7pm Nat will read a series of short poems connected to the exhibition's themes and subject matter.

Artist Bio

Nat Walpole (b.1994) is a Glasgow-based artist and writer who works across painting, drawing, and poetry. She is one of the organisers of the Un/Nature queer ecologies reading group and is part of the independent working group Protect Trans Healthcare.Scot. She was the recipient of the SeeMe Scotland Arts Fund (2021) and the VACMA Award (2019). Residencies include The Out of the Blue Print: Printmaking Residency (2021) and the House for an Art Lover: Studio Pavilion Residency (2019). Solo exhibitions include Narcissus and I, Glasgow Project Room (2021). Group exhibitions include Walk Don’t Walk, The Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Edinburgh (2020) and Nourishment, The Woom Room at Civic House, Glasgow (2024). Commissions include Queer Times School Prints Commission, Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art (2020) and recent publications include Unblemished: Stories of Trans Stigma (2021).