Brute at The Shuck, Kristian Day

2022 Letchworth Garden City Part residency, part exhibition, part retreat, The Shuck was a Kristian Day Gallery project inviting a series of artists to research and develop a body of work responding to our connection to nature, ecology, and sustainability from a suburban garden in Hertfordshire. --- Considering what it is to grow a shell, Anna Reading’s Brute, explores defence and aggression as methods for survival within inhospitable worlds. Exploring the increasing prevalence of the urban animal, Reading chooses fauna that appears familiar, wild and adapted to survival, but which finds itself in the sci-fi future of a brutal urbanism. Taking asphalt and ballast into their shells, these resourceful beasts make use of their surroundings to survive. Seeking refuse in an increasingly militarised setting, they take shelter in a garden shed. Enamoured with the adaptability of these brutes, Reading considers them to be translators, messengers from a world we are sheltered from.

Kristian Day