Graduated from Royal College of Art
Selected by Gill Hedley
Installation view, 2008
Artist statement
Owens covets the life of the flaneur. Her observations of the small defects and diversions in daily routine take on a significance beyond their scale. Evoking Godard's coffee cup moment; '…since every event transforms my daily life… I must listen, I must look around more than ever.'1 , the work is perpetually flitting between its familiar micro identity and a more abstract macro state. In 'Giant's Bread', tap water and glass transforms before the eyes to acquire depth, weight and a history before becoming glass and water once more. This transient condition and reluctance to become permanent adds to the work's vulnerability. In the end it takes the belief of the viewer to bring the work fully into being.
1. Two or Three Things I know About Her…Jean-Luc Godard, France 1966
Selector text
Kate Owens previously studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art and later co-founded The Embassy, an artist-led gallery, in Edinburgh.
Her final year show at The Royal College of Art was self-contained in every sense.
These are confident works, reticent yet provocative. There is a delicacy in many of them that is then unbalanced by the two works called 'Affair at Styles (purple & yellow)' and 'Affair at Styles (blue & pink)'. Cotton tee shirts are stuffed into bottles of fizzy drink which, by osmosis, dye the white cotton with a toxic stain.
There is a lyrical faintness of touch in 'The Kings Crystal' (a mural for a chipboard wall) and a fantastical bit of light alchemy in 'Giant's Bread'. Through elegant legerdemain, and the reflection from the skylight, a piece of glass spotted with tap water appears to have built up a geological history.
Hints and feints in the folds of a polythene bag or the almost readymade of cling-filmed bowls contrast with a projection, 'By the Pricking of My Thumbs' and the mono-prints, 'The Moving Finger (1 & 2)'. Water droplets seem to be replaced by something bloodier but the clues are less enticing than the seductive appearance.
'The Goodbye Look', a small photograph, gives a rat's eye-view of the underneath of some public seating that, damn it, I recognise but can't place. The titles of detective stories aren't the point: the clues lie elsewhere and here the mystery of each delicate confabulation is satisfying enough.
(Gill Hedley, 2008)
Qualifications and training
- 2008 MA Sculpture, Royal College of Art, London
- 2002 BA (Hons) Painting, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh
