EXHIBITION DATES : In person and online from 3/4 – 15/5
TO REGISTER YOUR INTEREST IN ADVANCE : click here
FOR PRESS RELEASE : click here
INTRODUCTION :
Over four years, Andrew Litten has formed a significant body of paintings, sculptures and assemblages shaped by the consistent pressure of loss and uncertainty. The work emerges from endurance, from bearing disturbance and from inhabiting the spaces where grief, longing and hope collide. Born from lived experience, the work reaches into our contemporary world of global turbulence and uncertainty, tracing the fragile, anxious contours of a shared human moment and suggesting through vulnerability a pathway of empathy and connection for us all.
Dynamic gesture, engaging colour intensity and material properties carry the traces of the human interior: tenderness brushing against estrangement, intimacy shadowed by alienation, presence unsettled by absence. The work lives in these margins - slightly skewed, quietly unsettling - yet still it resonates absolutely - as here, isolation becomes a bridge and vulnerability is a sharing.
Boats drift. Birds hover. Tides shift. Watches tick. Wheels roll. These elements mark movement, progression and transformation, threading through the work like quiet signposts in a internal and external landscape of flux...
Dynamic gesture, engaging colour intensity and material properties carry the traces of the human interior: tenderness brushing against estrangement, intimacy shadowed by alienation, presence unsettled by absence. The work lives in these margins - slightly skewed, quietly unsettling - yet still it resonates absolutely - as here, isolation becomes a bridge and vulnerability is a sharing.
Boats drift. Birds hover. Tides shift. Watches tick. Wheels roll. These elements mark movement, progression and transformation, threading through the work like quiet signposts in a internal and external landscape of flux...
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There is a lineage in which Litten’s practice sits: Bourgeois’ psychological tension, Giacometti’s fragile figuration, Goya’s moral scrutiny, Van Gogh’s raw intensity. Not through mimicry, but through kindred exploration: making visible the interior turbulence that is both personal and universal.
Creating this work is an act of deep attention and profound endurance. It is self-sacrificial, isolating and never self-soothing. Private intensity is risked, concentrated and released—offered outward, to provoke empathy and to incite connection. This is the tension that the work inhabits: darkness and hope, solitude and communion, grief and renewal.
In the quiet gravity of this exhibition, the nobility of Litten’s art is felt not in comfort, but in its honesty. Disturbing, necessary, exacting—yet profoundly humane. Through this sharing there is wider healing, a reflection of our shared fragility, uncertainty and need for compassion that mark this contemporary moment.
Joseph Clarke, 2026
“We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon... Nought may endure but mutability.”
BIOGRAPHY :
Andrew Litten’s dynamic and gestural figurative artworks express a strong interest in the universal complexity of everyday existence. Dealing with humanistic themes such as love, sensuality, fear, anger, loss, nostalgia, mundanity, personal growth and perceived identity normality or disturbance. Works are created with an unguarded, empathetic attitude, like so many expressionistic artists, a rawness of approach combined with an often viscous application of paint is also key to the extreme experience felt from the work. Gesture and nuance inspire extreme emotive reading, perhaps subversive, tender, passionate, ambivalent, malevolent or compassionate, our response becomes one of allure or repulsion.
Born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, in 1970, Andrew Litten is a distinctive voice in British contemporary art whose career began with a definitive act of independence. After finding the rigid structures of art college too restrictive for his aspired methods of working, Litten left as a teenager to pursue a self-taught path. For the following decade, he dedicated himself to creating small-scale works crafted from humble domestic and found materials, such as envelopes and assembled furniture parts. This formative period was a deliberate challenge to the concepts of art elitism and the commodity of the art object, establishing a raw, subversive philosophy that continues to underpin his practice. A pivotal shift occurred in 2001 when Litten moved to Cornwall and began to exhibit his work publicly. He achieved rapid critical success when his paintings were included in the Nudes exhibition in New York City alongside masters such as Jacob Epstein and Pierre Auguste Renoir. His contribution was singled out for review by the New York Times, marking the start of a significant upward trajectory. This was followed by four consecutive solo exhibitions at Goldfish Fine Arts in Penzance, each accompanied by a dedicated publication. His reputation for bold, “anti-art” statements was further solidified during Frieze Art Week 2007 at London’s Vyner Street, where he exhibited the emphatic work Dog Breeder as part of the Move exhibition. Litten’s presence in major institutions grew throughout the following decade, notably with his inclusion in No Soul For Sale at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall in 2010. By 2012, he was holding major solo exhibitions at Millennium in St Ives and L13 Light Industrial Workshop in London, as well as large-scale shows at Spike Island and Motorcade FlashParade in Bristol. His reach has since become truly global; his work has been featured in curated exhibitions from Berlin and Siena to Canberra and New York, including the 54th Venice Biennale. Furthermore, his paintings have been exhibited in the National Museum of Poland and across four major museums in China. Most recently, his work was showcased in the 2024 Radical Expression exhibition in Belgium alongside Frank Auerbach and George Grosz. In recent years, Litten has balanced his studio practice in Fowey with a deep commitment to public outreach and education. With support from the Arts Council UK, he conceived the 2018 exhibition Ordinary Bodies, Ordinary Bones at Anima Mundi. His advocacy for mental health is a cornerstone of his recent work, including a life-size bronze created for the Samaritans Charity at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2023, as well as collaborations with Cornwall Mind and an NHS suicide bereavement project at Tate St Ives. Today, he remains a vital figure in the arts community as a member of the Contemporary British Painting Group and a frequent educator at the Newlyn School of Art and Plymouth Art College University.Andrew Litten’s work is held in numerous prestigious private and public collections worldwide. He is represented by Anima Mundi.