Inadvertent, The Launderette, Bristol, April 2025, curated by Andrew Churchill & Catherine Knight
In Karl Ove Knausgård’s 2018 essay, Inadvertent, he sets out to answer the question, “Why I write” and muses on the idea that:
“Thoughts are the enemy of the inadvertent, for if one thinks about how something will seem to others, if one thinks about whether something is important or good enough, if one begins to calculate and to pretend, then it is no longer inadvertent and accessible as itself, but only as what we have made it into.
The thought of what others will think, of whether this is any good or not, all criticism and self- criticism, all reflection and judgment must be put aside for trust to develop. In this sense, writing must be open and innocent. But in order for something within this openness and innocence to emerge and become accessible, there have to be limitations, and this is what we call form.”
This could equally be applied to painting and how the best things are stumbled across almost by accident. Painters often devise ways to “get out of their own way”, catch themselves unaware or make their best work while focusing on a different piece entirely.
Knausgård’s vulnerability, unflinching honesty about his own life and way of exploring universal issues such as love, death and grief, intertwined with domestic details and the daily workings of family life alongside his ability to see the everyday in fresh and new ways make him a favourite writer of many painters. This exhibition aims to open this discussion and bring together work from a diverse set of painters who relate to him in their own way or whose work has a resonance with Knausgård’s writing for the curators of this exhibition.
This exhibition brought together 16 painters responding to or in dialogue with the writing of Norwegian author, Karl Ove Knausgård. Curated by Andrew Churchill and Catherine Knight.
List of Artists:
Louise Bristow
Maria Carvallo
Andrew Churchill
Martyn Cross
Lara Davies
Salvatore Fiorello
Nicky Hodge
Peter Jones
Catherine Knight
Brendan Lancaster
Tim Millen
Johannah Muriel
David Risley
Kate Sherman
Michael Simpson
Reed Wilson