Red on Blue Hothouse

Anna Kell works extensively with domestic cast-offs to make artwork that explores the intersection of nature and culture. In “The Hothouses” series of paintings, Kell imposed the structured silhouettes of greenhouses into the floral, fecund space of the patterned mattress fabric. For her, the greenhouse is a visual symbol for mediation and carefully controlled growth. Here, she relates this idea of control to the defined form of the mattress, a site arguably designated for our most "natural", or human, moments.  To Kell, the very presence of flowers – the sexual organs of plants and ubiquitous symbols of beauty, fertility and desire – on these objects signals a distancing from our own bodies and offers us instead cultural attitudes about sex, gender, and home.