University Campus Suffolk

My degree show space is an exhibition of the questions that I have been tackling throughout the year, I have intentionally not titled any of the work as I like the ambiguity of its arrangement, I think the space asks questions about its position, is it a collection of sculptures? Is it an installation? This echoes my tireless search for my own position and voice within my art work and I think this openess to interpretation is a good indicator of the honesty with which I try to create works.

The space is intentionally sparse, I believe that the negative space is as important as the objects themselves, I am interested in space and how I use it, how the objects use it and how the viewer could use it. I have changed the objects and the arrangements in the space countless times and somehow this one felt right. In the studio I always create works fairly quickly and then spend much more time staring at the objects and thinking, when I went through this process with my degree show I began to think about how we use other spaces and how objects there are arranged. Somehow it feels to me when I am in the space that one wall is left almost completely bare and it is only when I am standing in the empty space that the work is completed.

The roughly applied paint seems to become a metaphor for the transience of my works and the idea any moment of satisfaction and fulfilment with the work is fleeting and as such always unfinished and changing.

The black board on the right hand side is, to me, very humorous… the small triangular leaflet that is crudely stuck to the board is actually a leaflet for the Jerwood Painting Fellowship, it is stuck on with black paint roughly applied over the top. I suppose having the leaflet on my painted board is a way of asking whether or not it is a painting, again I have been playing with where the boundaries of definition lie. It makes me laugh because it is somehow mocking my own work, it is accepting what it is – a roughly painted board – and yet by having that particular leaflet on the board I am asking what is important, I suppose it is a question of value. It is a comment on my disinterest with skill and my interest in exploring what I can do with objects.

The show is completely made of everyday objects and I think this echoes my awareness that life and art are inseparable, the humble, simple nature of the materials appeals to me as I feel it gives the work a humaness that I – and hopefully the viewer – can relate to, it raises questions of use and value.

My degree has been a very intense journey, I have had times of complete frustration – feeling like everything I make doesn’t live up to the expectations I have of it (maybe there are too many) – but ultimately it has made me realise that I don’t actually have a choice, I have to make art, each time I have felt like giving in I have somehow found the inspiration to carry on, I never stop thinking about it, reading about it and I just can’t seem to physically stop making it.

Over the course of my final year I have been particularly interested in exploring the process of creating work, at times I have felt that I have been working out what it means to be an artist but that has been a really important part of my journey. I have explored working spontaneously, attempted to go beyond my own mind to create work, explored chance happenings in the studio, had an idea and followed it through and made it. My practice throughout the whole year has been far more focused on the process of creating the work than it has been on the final product and all of my works were recycled to create new ones, to me as soon as a work was finished it was dead – it had served its purpose to teach me what I needed to know at that time but beyond that it had no use to me!

The research that I did for my dissertation changed the way I thought about my work considerably, it made me far more aware of ideas around decommodification and dematerialisation.

My work has aimed to be subtle and considered, humble in its materials and honest in its considerations, I think I have high expectations of my work and have had to remind myself that I often compare what I am doing to artists that have been working for forty + years!

Reading has taken up much of my time over the last year and it has been invaluable to the quality of my understanding, my main influences in terms of artists have been:

Phyllida Barlow, she describes her work as being about the physical and material process and how this relates to space, although her sculptures are much bigger than anything I have been able to produce I also really like the raw, unfinished aesthetic of her work. My work is very much about how it interacts with space and I have always been fascinated by the offcuts of other peoples work, I often find the decisions that people make more interesting than the finished work.

Sean Landers conversations about trying to make his work as honest as possible has been a constant inspiration to me, I have always tried to make my work honest, in the beginning I thought I had achieved this but I think the more I read and think about what it really means to be honest and why this is valuable the more I realise that to make honest work could perhaps be a really difficult thing.

Gerhard Richter has been very influential in understanding my practice and the work itself, the way he relates to his own practice and talking about just letting things happen has been really inspiring.

There are many, many more artists that have inspired my work and I have discussed these in my blog and in other areas of contextual reference.

My approaches to the work constantly shift and often it is through chance and trial and error that I come to find something that I feel is right.

After having been in my degree space for two solid weeks I finally decided on the final arrangement a couple of days ago, it isn’t easy for me to make a decision and any moment of satisfaction with a work is fleeting, I think this shows in the transience of my practice!

It has been really interesting gathering together all of my contextual work for assessment, it has meant going through lots of things that I had totally forgotten about and with the knowledge I have gained in the meantime, noticing stronger connections and influences. For instance, in 2011 I went to the Modern British Sculpture exhibition at RA, looking back at it suddenly made me remember walking around looking at the work and how captivated I was by the room that displayed Hepworth and Moore sculptures, I had been reading about how they had been placed to ‘speak’ to one another and it was the first time I had really been able to see how powerful and interesting this idea could be. This idea is one that has stuck with me and I have become increasingly interested in the dialogues that could occur between different objects I place in a space.

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I have also realised that constantly trying to be honest is a bit of a burden, what is it to be honest in your art? Is it work that expresses your opinions? How can that be when it will always be interpreted in a myriad of ways. Surely honesty can be the ONLY way to make work, it is you making the work so how can it be anything else? I always struggled with the distance I felt between the work and now I think it is a blessing in many ways. The ability to step away from it allows me a greater perspective, the ability to destroy it without attachment if it isn’t working and it also means I can have fun, going into the studio feels like another world for me, I am no longer Kate, I feel different, I think differently and actually, this is one of the main reasons I love making work, it means I can step in to various different roles and interact with the work.