Hettie Inniss

"Clawing At the Truth", Oil on Canvas, 160 x 170 cm

Hettie Inniss, b. 1999 Hackney, London UK, is an artist and recent graduate from the University of Leeds studying Art and Design BA Hons (2022). She continues her practice at the Royal College of Art on the Painting MA course (2022 -23). During her time at RCA Inniss has been awarded the Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship (2022) which supports students from Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage. She is also a recipient of the ColArt Windsor and Newton Bursary (2023).

Her most recent exhibitions include: 'Fluidity', (The Night Café, Fitzrovia, London), 'RBA Rising Star', (Royal Over-seas League, Green Park, London), 'Impressions', (Subtitle Labs, Notting Hill, London). She is currently showing at the (Hew Hood Gallery, Islington, London) 'Somewhere In Between'. Inniss's work is also held in several private collections.

Hettie Inniss, sitting in her studio in front of painting "Clawing At the Truth" (2023)

Hettie Inniss is an artist based in London whose practice questions the stability of identity. By working from her involuntary memories Inniss takes a Proustian approach to making, focusing on the unexpected moments where our senses are stimulated and the mind transports us to familiar or eerily unknown spaces. She uses her awareness of the constructability of memories as a tool to look beyond identity in a binary way. Much like memory, identity also shifts. Both have the capacity for clarity, ambiguity and absence. There is no definitive. Her handling of the paint follows this principle. Paint can slip and fade and it can stand boldly or whispers quietly within the work. The senses aid her orientation of the materials; how does a memory taste, how does it sound, how does the application of paint reflect these feelings? This intimate practice allows Inniss to combat rigid ideas of representation, advocating for Black Fluidity as a more liberating way of being.

Inniss takes comfort in the unreliable, questioning our desire to seek absolutism. Articulating these vivid ideas through paint allows her creativity to thrive. Both figuration and abstraction intertwine. The canvas becomes a space of evolving openness and a place to constantly learn and unlearn. Inniss' paintings come with the promise of there being no definitive, that there is always room for something to shift and a hope that its viewers find something different every time they view it.