Cat Brown

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ARTIST CATALOGUE

A Rat’s Tale

People have always been storytellers, passing down folklore from  generation to generation. These stories form the threshold by which we articulate ourselves and our relationship to the world around us illustrating an inherent interconnectedness grounded in common moral truths. My curiosity in folklore emerges in the uncanny embedded in parental cautionary tales.  My work retells the traditional “Tooth Mouse” folklore behind the modern fairytale that gifts a tooth under our pillows. I engage with childhood growing pains through messy and vibrant monotype prints. I respond to the strange act by parents in offering their children’s exfoliated teeth to rodents as an act of care. 

An old belief that the new adult tooth would adopt the characteristics of that animal. The incisors of rats are ever-growing and require constant gnawing labour in which to maintain them.   Over the past year, toothache has protruded into my thoughts. My shifting jaw, my daily routines to brush and over brush or forgetting completely. Teeth too large for my jaw, my rotting tooth, fixed and then pulled. The cavities that line my smile - the tooth marks a memory, a moment in time where we begin to leave our childhood behind. Recording these quiet traces of neglect and care.   Feelings of pain and discomfort are a part of growing [up]. 

Growth is a continuous confrontation with our own estrangement to memories and feelings that were once familiar . Lodging the notion of uncanny as central in which to humanise and process the experiences of trauma. My work explores the role of animals in these cautionary tales. Particularly the rat, as a narrative device that offers new multiplicities of understanding that mediates the bittersweetness of growing up, negotiating new relationships and realities within the home.