Max Petts | Dead Kitchen (mise-en-scène - Thomas versus John - give me drama for I need to justify these feelings - RIP Pam)

£4,200.00

Dead Kitchen (mise-en-scène - Thomas versus John - give me drama for I need to justify these feelings - RIP Pam)

Acrylic, pine, emulsion, mdf, steel, nylon, masking tape, panel pins, crayon, paper, graphite, coloured pencil, giclée print, tempera craft paint, newsprint

80.4 x 110.9 x 1.8 cm

2025

£4,200 GBP

Enquire here

This layered work draws on personal and generational memory to explore the performance of meaning. On the right, a harlequin figure is a crayon rubbing of a woodcut by the artist’s grandfather, once hung in Petts’ childhood bedroom. The left side borrows from a phonics worksheet completed by the artist’s nephew, whose scribbled gesture is echoed in the central crimson form. Small interventions - like the iCloud icon replacing a cloud and Dinah the cat (from Alice in Wonderland) subbing in for the worksheet pet - fold mass culture into memory. ‘Pam,’ the original name given to the worksheet’s figure, is redacted by the nephew but mourned in the title. A black-and-white grid extends out like a kitchen floor, a chessboard, or a perspectival stage - drawing together domesticity, drama, and digitality. Signed in the zigzag gesture Petts invented at age five, the work also subtly incorporates a 30cm architectural ruler bar above the grid, blurring lines between measurement and memory.

Dead Kitchen (mise-en-scène - Thomas versus John - give me drama for I need to justify these feelings - RIP Pam)

Acrylic, pine, emulsion, mdf, steel, nylon, masking tape, panel pins, crayon, paper, graphite, coloured pencil, giclée print, tempera craft paint, newsprint

80.4 x 110.9 x 1.8 cm

2025

£4,200 GBP

Enquire here

This layered work draws on personal and generational memory to explore the performance of meaning. On the right, a harlequin figure is a crayon rubbing of a woodcut by the artist’s grandfather, once hung in Petts’ childhood bedroom. The left side borrows from a phonics worksheet completed by the artist’s nephew, whose scribbled gesture is echoed in the central crimson form. Small interventions - like the iCloud icon replacing a cloud and Dinah the cat (from Alice in Wonderland) subbing in for the worksheet pet - fold mass culture into memory. ‘Pam,’ the original name given to the worksheet’s figure, is redacted by the nephew but mourned in the title. A black-and-white grid extends out like a kitchen floor, a chessboard, or a perspectival stage - drawing together domesticity, drama, and digitality. Signed in the zigzag gesture Petts invented at age five, the work also subtly incorporates a 30cm architectural ruler bar above the grid, blurring lines between measurement and memory.

Max Petts lives and works in London. They graduated from the Goldsmiths MFA in 2023 and from Chelsea College of Art in 2012.
Their practice deals with the complexity of looking and making while seeking to examine their place in the world and the specific set of privileges and penalties they have inherited. Working across disciplines (drawing, painting, writing, finding) they focus on the interplay of images and objects and the relationships that allow meaning to develop. Relationships between bodies and materials, facts and fictions. They consider their practice as an awareness building exercise; a way to posit contradictions.
2019 - 2023 Goldsmiths, University of London, MFA Fine Art
2009 - 2012 Chelsea College of Art, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Selected shows:
2025 Proscenium, Xxijra Hii, London, UK (Solo)
2022 flowers (w/ Robert Orr) - Xxijra Hii, London, UK (Duo)
2025 Salon Sauvage, Gnossienne Gallery, London, UK (Forthcoming group show)
2023 This be the verse, Xxijra Hii, London, UK (Group), Interlude, Kupfer, London, UK (Group), Baggage Claim, Staffordshire St, London, UK, 2022 Present Tense, Goldsmiths MFA Studios, London, UK, 2021 MAXWORLD presents: Smokey, Merle and friends..., 310 New Cross Road, London, UK, 2020 Goldsmiths, Department of Eagles, Online, 2019 You, Me and Everybody Else, Oneroom Gallery, London, UK, 2016 My Own Private Idaho, Charlton Gallery, London, UK.

Max Petts | Dead Kitchen (mise-en-scène - Thomas versus John - give me drama for I need to justify these feelings - RIP Pam)

£4,200 GBP

Enquire here

£4,200 GBP

Enquire here

About Max Petts

Max Petts CV