Inadvertent

An exhibition responding to or in dialogue with the writing of Karl Ove Knausgård.

The Launderette, Bristol
26 April to 4 May 2025

Opening times:
Saturday 26 April, 11 - 4 pm
Thursday 1 May, 11 -3 pm
Friday 2 May, 11 - 4 pm
Saturday 3 May, 11 - 4 pm
Sunday 4 May, 11 - 4 pm
Or by appointment. Email catherineknight.art@gmail.com

Curated by Andrew Churchill and Catherine Knight

All enquiries please call 07866 332621 or email andrewchurchill100@gmail.com

Louise Bristow
Maria Carvallo
Andrew Churchill
Martyn Cross
Lara Davies
Salvatore Fiorello
Nicky Hodge
Peter Jones
Catherine Knight
Brendan Lancaster
Tim Millen
Johannah Muriel
David Risley
Michael Simpson
Kate Sherman
Reed Wilson

Most works are for sale both online and in the gallery - see below.

In Karl Ove Knausgård’s 2018 essay, Inadvertent, he sets out to answer the question, “Why I write” and muses on the idea that:

“Thoughts are the enemy of the inadvertent, for if one thinks about how something will seem to others, if one thinks about whether something is important or good enough, if one begins to calculate and to pretend, then it is no longer inadvertent and accessible as itself, but only as what we have made it into. The thought of what others will think, of whether this is any good or not, all criticism and self-criticism, all reflection and judgment must be put aside for trust to develop. In this sense, writing must be open and innocent. But in order for something within this openness and innocence to emerge and become accessible, there have to be limitations, and this is what we call form.”

This could equally be applied to painting and how the best things are stumbled across almost by accident. Painters often devise ways to “get out of their own way”, catch themselves unaware or make their best work while focusing on a different piece entirely. Knausgård’s vulnerability, unflinching honesty about his own life and way of exploring universal issues such as love, death and grief, intertwined with domestic details and the daily workings of family life alongside his ability to see the everyday in fresh and new ways make him a favourite writer of many painters.

For many artists their first exposure to Knausgård was his book on Edvard Munch, So much longing in so little space. Having been invited by the Munch Museum to curate an exhibition he records how he was drawn toward those paintings rarely shown. Depicting the humdrum and the everyday, the side of his house or a field of cabbages Munch’s paintings selected by Knausgård reflect his writing, particularly in My Struggle. For artist Catherine Knight this book on Munch was the impetus to take a trip to Oslo to visit Munch’s house and the surrounding landscape.

Knausgård has written countless other essays about painters as well as collaborating with artists for his book covers including contemporary artists Karin Mamma Andersson, Anna Bjerger, Anselm Kiefer, Vanessa Baird and Celia Paul. We have all heard of the expression “a Painters Painter” but perhaps there is such a thing as a “Painters Writer”? The painter David Risley has written that “he is one of the only writers who really gets art”.

In Inadvertent Knausgård uses the analogy of the hedgehogs in his garden to describe approaches to writing:

“Sitting still and waiting for them [hedgehogs in the dark] to come out and become accessible to my gaze is the novel’s way of thinking, while … the inadvertent stumbling over them in the dark and giving it a kick is the logic of poems and short prose. In both cases its happens inadvertently...”