This exhibition celebrates feral female desire

The uncaged expression of sexual appetite, free from ego and external projections, is something that generally sits at odds with the reality of the female experience. Women are subject to moral judgments and cultural pressures that dictate how they should express or, more likely, repress their carnal desires.

As part of a growing cultural understanding of women’s right to define their sexuality on their own terms, Bitches in Heat, a duo exhibition of artwork by Lydia Pettit and Olivia Sterling at Guts Gallery in London, attempts to redress this dichotomy, portraying the nature of sexuality and the libido as it exists within and for the self.

Throughout the exhibition, both artists seek to challenge the limited contemporary cliches of who is desired – and how. “From a young age, I’ve felt an intense pressure to be small - physically and emotionally. To keep myself tucked in and meek so that I would be deemed appropriate and attractive like other women,” Pettit tells Dazed. “I was deeply self-conscious and had a warped view of my body, and it's taken years to start dismantling this lens.”

Pettit has been portraying herself in paintings almost exclusively for seven years. In Bitches in Heat, she presents a series of disturbingly feral self-portraits, employing the canvas as a mirror in which to become acquainted with her body and emotions – both “ugly and beautiful alike”. Here the artist’s voracious rapture is animalistically manifested, as she crawls naked across the floor with talon-like nails, frothing at the mouth and baring her teeth. Enhanced by a deft, menacing treatment of light and shadow, Pettit employs the visual language and tropes of horror films to convey the fear of what happens when women become powerful and unbridled by social niceties.

“I wanted to show how frightening it feels to encounter your sexuality after it has been locked away for a decade” – Lydia Pettit

“For this show, I wanted to show how frightening it feels to encounter your sexuality after it has been locked away for a decade, and also how thrilling it is to embrace the rabid, beastly side of the self,” says Pettit. “It feels unfamiliar, almost violent, to meet the desire within you, especially when you don't know what to feed it.”

“With this exhibition, we aim to depict desire as something overwhelming,” Sterling adds. “This ‘demonic’ force is particularly overwhelming if you possess an ‘undesired’ body. But we still have a sexuality that begs to be fed. This energy, perceived as grotesque, is the basis for mine and Lydia’s artworks.”

With her signature slapstick visual quality, Sterling reclaims sexual agency almost to the point of parody, challenging the societal expectations placed on certain bodies, particularly plus-sized ones. By exaggerating her female figures, she obliterates conventional image-based gender stereotypes to offer a more nuanced perspective on pleasure and desire. These new paintings respond to a pervading insistence that larger bodies are undesirable, leading to a sense of misplaced or confused sexual agency. “I reflect this disordered viewpoint in my paintings by placing things where they don’t belong,” the artist says. “Women fall through ceilings, a dog’s head is shoved where it shouldn’t be, and a chocolate box is filled with snakes and worms.”

In paintings such as “When oh when” (2024), Sterling perceives the inherent sensuality of food and the act of eating as a visual euphemism for our carnal appetites. Pudgy fingers grab at a box of sweet treats and swipe at gooey cake icing. In “And her warm chest is a sweet grave” (2024), jammy biscuits float, nipple-like, above a large bust. “The trickery of the nipples becoming edible objects aims to mimic my mixed feelings of consumption and desire,” Sterling continues. “That to be desired is to be consumed, like food. And that to be a woman, or a feminine person, is to be seen as an object and therefore consumable.”

“To be desired is to be consumed, like food. And that to be a woman, or a feminine person, is to be seen as an object and therefore consumable” – Olivia Sterling

The anxieties surrounding women’s sexuality are keenly intimated in Bitches in Heat, where the image of the 'dog' or ‘bitch’ incarnates aspects of the self – the Id, anxieties, and even libido. Inspired by Paula Rego’s iconic Dog Woman series, the animal depicts contrasting responses to these internal forces: Pettit’s dog is aggressive and moves forward with boldness, while Sterling’s shrinks away or chases its tail, unsure and hesitant.

“When Olivia and I knew we wanted to talk about desire and our shared frustration over this need for male validation, I decided to paint my own dog woman,” Pettit shares. “She’s an intersection of Rego’s primality and horror’s absurdity in which I share a fear of my own sexuality and the severance between the mind and body as a consequence of trauma. It feels liberating to depict myself as something purely primal without doubt.”

Removing the filter of expectations and opinions pushed upon them, both Pettit and Sterling are free to release their primitive and instinctual relationship to their physicality. Centring irreverent and vivid declarations of sexual autonomy Bitches in Heat acts as an important reminder that women don’t need permission to enjoy the hungry, powerful, and frightening facets of desire. 

Bitches in Heat is on view at Guts Gallery, London until October 13.