"Nested" Painting

Lydia Lott is a London-based artist whose practice spans painting, textiles, drawing, printmaking and sculpture. Drawing from phenomenology and spatial theory, their practice explores ideas of ‘homing’, conceptualising home not primarily as a place but as an embodied mode of being in the world. Inspired by Heidegger’s idea of ‘dwelling’, their work explores the idea that spaces have the potential to become extensions of the body, whether that be domestic, urban or or digital spaces, and that belonging is cultivated when the self, the body and the space in which it resides are harmonious. Their work raises questions about instances in which this harmony is disrupted. Who ‘belongs’ in a place? Who decides who belongs? What marks do external forces make on the body? What claims do they make upon it? What does it feel like to belong in a body? What do we turn to in the absence of this feeling? Ultimately, they focus on the ways in which bodies are shaped by and in turn shape their environment, seeking, through acts of exposure and revelation to extend the interior into the exterior and the private into the public.