Nat Pitt                      

selected cuarated projects 2009-2024

Division of Labour (gallerist 2016-Present)
PiTT Studio c.I.C (Curator 2013- 2025)

A modest show (curator 2022-2023)

  1. Fayre Share Fayre
  2. Superpositions
  3. Camp Bread
  4. Making of a Sausage

tHe Manchester Contemorary (curator 2019-present)

  1. Collections Pavilion
  2. Alternative Gallery Spaces Pavilion
  3. Logistics Pavilion (see Pallet Show)
  4. Artist Studios Pavilion

6 shows about looking at art  (Curated series)

  1. Looking at People Looking at Art, Division of Labour, Bethnal Green, London (group show, co-curated by Mark Essen) 2015
  2. Looking at Art Looking at People, David Burrows, Jemma Egan, Luke McCreadie, Yelena Popova. Modern Clay, Birmingham 2017
  3. Looking at People, Looking at Themselves, Looking at Art
    Hilary Jack, University of Worcester 2021
  4. Looking at People Looking at Art in the Gallery from the Studio
    Kieran Leach, Division of Labour, Salford 2022
  5. Looking at Art Fair People Looking at Artists Looking at Art
    The Manchester Contemporary 2024
  6. Looking at People not looking at Art (not yet realised)

5 Things in life  (Curated series)

  1. Apparel (Clothing) 
  2. NHS (Welfare)
  3. Brickworks (Housing, not yet realised)
  4. Usery (Debt, not yet realised)
  5. Fayre Share Fayre (Food)

4 things about stuff (Curated series)

  1. Cryopreservation : Need Flowers Tomorrow?
    Syson Gallery, Nottingham (group)
  2. Fugazi, Division of Labour, London
    Andrew Lacon, Jasleen Kaur
  3. Microplastics Rain Down From the Sky, Worcester / Rotterdam
    Edward Clydesdale Thomson, Hilary Jack, Mark S Gubb
  4. COOL WARM HOT! University of Worcester
    Andrew Lacon, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Ruth Murray

4 shows about The Story of Art (Curated series)

  1. Of Art the Story,  Rotterdam
    Matthew Collings, Daniel Pryde Jarman
  2. Story of the Art (not realised)
  3. Art of the Story (not realised)
  4. The Art of Story (not realised)

3 shows about machines & Art (Curated series)

  1. News about Flowers (group sho)
  2. Yet More News about Flowers
    Andee Collard
  3. Hyper-Deflation
    Rosie McGinn, Dean Kenning

2 Group shows about INvisibility (Curated series)

  1. After, Division of Labour, London
    Robert Barry, Céline Berger, Cornford & Cross, Brian O'Doherty, Andrew Gillespie, Ned James, Andrew Lacon, Joanne Masding, Flore Nove-Josserand, Joe Fletcher Orr, Yelena Popova, Gavin Wade.

  2. Your Face has no Function for Me, Division of Labour, London
    David Blamey, Céline Berger, Matthew Cornford, Chto Delat, Mark Essen, Joe Fletcher Orr, John Kilduff, Saulius Leonavičius, Mark McGowan, Flore Nove-Josserand,Yelena Popova, David Rickard, Gavin Wade.

1  Group show about migration (selected)

  1. Migrant Re-visited
    Sonia Boyce, David Blackmoore, Mark S Gubb


Current artworks

Pallet show in collaboration  
with Daniel Pryde-Jarman

  1. Pallet Show 12, The Manchester Contemporary 2023
  2. Pallet Show ibid, University of Worcester 2023
  3. Pallet Show FREEPORT, The Minories, Colchester 2024
  4. Crate on Pallet, Paradise Works, Salford 2024
  5. Pallet Show & Abstract Kab,  Second Act gallery, London 2024
  6. Juxtaposed Art Fair - Arhaus (forthcoming 2025)


Looking at People Looking at Art




Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

— Vincent Van Gogh

Andrei Costache, Andrew Gillespie , Andrew Mealor , Andy Holden, Bedwyr Williams, Charlie Duck, Charlotte Salt, Chudamani Clowes , Coco Crampton, Josephine Flynn, Kate Owens, Katrin Hanusch , Laurence Owen, Leah Carless, Matthew Peers, Niamh Riordan, Oscar Gaynor, Phil Root, Rachel Haines, Robert Rush, Zadie Xa



Looking at People Looking at Art

Division of Labour
13 July - 10 August 2016

Review by Tim Dixon


The ‘return to craft’ refers to a resurgent interest in hands-on processes of making within contemporary art – a return that might be seen to draw influence from the British Arts and Crafts movement. Rather than resulting in refined, rarified and decorative objects, the pieces gathered here seem on the whole quite proud to show off their rough edges, pleased with their stodginess and lumpiness, and are happy to sit somewhat awkwardly before us.

‘Looking at People Looking at Art’ is the second show at Division of Labour, gallerist Nathaniel Pitt’s new space on London’s Herald Street. His gallery of the same name has been running in Worcester since 2012.



Guest co-curator Mark Essen has constructed a conceptual framework that playfully foregrounds the social and physical mechanics of the artspace. Essen has quite literally staged a group show - building a bright yellow platform that skirts the gallery space with some 21 objects arranged atop. The ‘People’ of the title can access the space through a narrow pathway, determining specific vantage points from which we see the works. The viewer is almost excluded from the assembled exhibition, disbarred from wandering around and between the objects.

The assembled works share an interest in processes and types of making that we also find in Essen’s own work as an artist. Ceramics loom large, with painting, textiles and casting also present. Set against a bright yellow base and laden with humour, the show has cartoonish moments: Charlie Duck’s slapstick ‘Yellowman’ (2015) presenting a stoneware banana skin ready to cause a slip, Bedwyr Williams’ ‘Clocsiwr’ (2012) a pair of Adidas Stan Smiths re-soled into a pair of clogs and Katrin Hanusch’s ‘Spillover’ (2016) whose bright pink form crowns the space.

Hanusch’s sculpture embodies many of the show’s themes: a pink-coloured, over-sized chain, handcrafted link-by-link is hoisted up to the gallery ceiling and supported by a bright pink beam of oak. The work is impressive in its skill and meticulous construction, while self-defeating and self-deprecating in its lack of function. The piece is brash in its self-confidence and monumentality while it amuses and undermines itself in its humour. Niamh Riordan’s ‘Milk Spoons’ (2016), floppy casts of spoons made from milk and dye, and Robert Rush’s up-turned, glazed sink ‘Portal to an unseen world’ (2016) underscore this subjugation of function to form.

Some works in the show enjoy revelling in crudeness and lewdness. Andrew Gillespie’s ‘Fun in Functional’ (2016), a partially concealed poster print ruminating on the many uses of the word ‘shit,’ is a case in point, as is Josephine Flynn’s ‘Untitled - Turd’ (2013), a giant silver-foil turd, propped carefully against the wall, nestled in a blanket. The rough and ready forms of Laurence Owen’s ‘Channel 4’ (2016) and Matthew Peers’ discrete ‘Untitled (bunher i)’ (2016) sit in dialogue with these: material crudeness against linguistic crudeness.

These works are offset by quieter moments. Leah Carless’ jesmonite castings of hands and the soles of feet adds a touch of delicacy in ‘Fillers’ (2016), while Kate Owens’ intriguing textile collage, ‘Trying to cut out a heart’ (2016) suggests a note of sentimentality. The cut-out strips and pieces of found fabrics arrayed on a long, grey background incite curiosity about the artist’s processes of selection and arrangement. Phil Root’s ‘Merchant on Pilgrim’s Way’ (2016), a handmade t-shirt adorned with a selection of Tarot cards, provides a hook for a narrative line of flight.

The show’s title refers to a meta-structure placed above this assemblage; by climbing a few steps we access a vantage point elevated above the objects and view the room anew through a window, watching the exhibition and its audience as if from the outside. If the exhibition until now has foregrounded the objectness of the objects, then this turn draws attention to the interrelationships of these objects and their viewers.

For all the crudeness and humour found in these works the artists seem to share a sense of seriousness in their approach to practice. Essen describes the artists gathered here as ‘a collection of makers, doers, plants, connectors, generators, dynamos, emitters and conductors’. Manual labour, work, the importance of studio practice, making and materiality run through the objects he has collected together. This is paired with an interest in the modes of sociality and interaction that might occur around the works.



The accompanying text invites us to think about the political ramifications of the aesthetic decisions and processes made by the artists. Essen values ‘auto-didacticism, artists who are prolific in pursuit and vision, [who] never stop working or thinking’. Like the formal quality of the work this political dimension feels like one of resolved experimentation, a pursuit of singular visions and collectivity around personally-defined value systems. This is a politics to be pursued with sustained seriousness but not without humour or accident.