KATE MARSHALL CV
2013 – 2014 MA Fine Art as Contemporary Practice, Falmouth School of Art
2001 - 2004 BA Fine Art and Art History, Goldsmiths College, London
2000 - 2001 Foundation Art and Design, Falmouth College of Art
SELECTED PAST EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS
SOLO SHOWS
2011-, Dartmouth, Flavel Arts Centre, Dartmouth
2009 - Unsettler, Live performance drawing and sound art, The Empire Gallery, Vyner Street, London
2009 - Live Life Drawing at Movida, London
2008 - Blue Stockings, The Empire Gallery, Vyner Street, London
2007 - Dirty Pretty Paintings - The Empire Gallery, Vyner Street, London
2007 - Sweet Nothings - including live painting performance at the Lange Nacht der Museen, Bourgeois Pig, Heidelberg, Germany
2006 - Sweet Nothings, Eyestorm Exeter, Exeter, Devon
GROUP SHOWS
2014 - MA group show, Cynical Optimism, Falmouth Wharves, Falmouth, Cornwall
2011 - Trace, Alice Leach, Kate Marshall and Clem So, Totnes, Devon
2010 - Book Art , Exhibition of Handmade Books, Dartington Hall, Devon
2010 - Gazing Extravaganza , MA Curating show at Dartington College, Devon
2009 - The Big Show, The Hamptons, NY, USA
2009 - There's Still Life - Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London
2008 - What's Up With Illustration? Exhibition and live drawing evening, Mauger Modern Art, Bath
2008 - The Painting Room, Transition Gallery, London
2008 - The Big Show, The Hamptons, NY, USA
2008 - Forget Me Not (curated by Gristle Mountain), Fort Brockhurst, Portsmouth
2006 - London Style, Eyestorm Milan, Milan, Italy
2006 - My Life in Art, Broadway Market, London
2006 - Noise Festival at the Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool
2005 - Space Studios, Hackney, London
2004 - Recent Graduates Exhibition, AAF - selection of graduates from the nation's top art schools, London
COLLABORATIONS
2012 – Collaboration with curator Gareth Ballyn, Tagore Palimpsest, Tagore festival live art event and exhibition, Dartington Estate, Devon
2011 – Collaboration with curator Gareth Ballyn , Bitterweed, live creation of handmade zines and exhibition, Dartington Estate, Devon
2009 - The Drowning Room, Collaborative live drawing and sound installation with curator Gareth Ballyn and sound artist Ben Hudson, The Courtyard Tower, The Great Hall, Dartington Hall, Devon
2008 - Unseen South Hams, artist curated show in pop-up space, The Old Library, Dartmouth, Devon
RESIDENCIES
2013 – Solo show and artist in residence, Drink, Shop & Do, London
2011 - Residency, RIACE, Rhaghurajpur Artisans Village, Orissa, India
WORKSHOPS
2013 – Tutor, Printmaking from the river, experimental printmaking tutor, Coombe Farm Studios, Devon
2012- Workshop leader, WestEnd Daytrip, workshop with NEETs, Plymouth, Devon
2012 – Tutor, Printmaking from the river, experimental printmaking tutor, Coombe Farm Studios, Devon
2007 -2013, Member of the Dartington Printmakers, Dartington, Devon
KATE MARSHALL ARTIST STATEMENT SEPTEMBER 2014
Whilst night-sailing round the coast from my home town of Dartmouth, bound for Falmouth to start my MA, my thoughts drifted down to the boats and souls below; all those who never made it home. My current project has sailed away from actual shipwrecks into metaphors (and clichés); it is inspired by the romance and superstition surrounding sailing, boats, the sea, loss; the relics that remain and the stories they suggest. I am interested in the curious connections and frictions between the sublime and the domestic. I use traditional techniques and materials coupled with more high-tech technologies, mixing up craft and conceptual art, gendered mediums, pathos and bathos. The materiality of materials fascinates me; their histories, techniques, lingos, smells, feel and look.
SEA BLANKET
For years I have gathered fabric from tidelines, not really having any ideas as to what to do with it. It joined the other ‘treasures’ I found; shoved into pockets or backs of drawers or bags. But this year, the storms brought huge amounts of bounty and I have started to sew it together into a growing patchwork. The beach I find most fabric on is Blackpool Sands, the beach closest to my childhood home. The process is laborious but pleasurable (apart from stabbing myself with the needle), it is a good time to think or chat depending on where I am sewing. I have sewn on beaches, on my boat, in bed, in studios, pubs and in the cellars of the Porthmeor Studios in St Ives. As I sew I like to wonder about where, when and how the fabric ended up in the sea. The patchwork will grow and grow, becoming enormous, and in theory, never ending. It could be a blanket, a dress, a sail or a shroud. The act of sewing to excess invokes women from myths and fairytales; Penelope’s daily weaving and nightly un-ravelling, the hapless heroine helped by Rumplestiltskin to complete the impossible task of spinning straw into gold and the swan princess sewing stinging nettles into nets. But sewing is also a revolutionary technological invention for it allowed humankind to fashion containers, clothes and boats. There is still one bunch of burly chaps who sew; sailors and fishermen. Sailors have traditionally been competent stitchers for sails, clothes and nets need making and repairing, even their spare time was spent embroidering (more butchly known as crewel work) or using the needles to engrave scrimshaws or tattoo themselves or each other. If a sailor died at sea he would be sewn into an old sail or his hammock, the last stitch going through his nose, just to make sure he was dead, before he was consigned to the watery depths.
FATHOM
Relics from shipwrecks might be glamorous and valuable gold or silver treasure but the everyday objects like china, belt buckles or blankets are just as fascinating and somehow more poignant in their domesticity and ordinariness. Sometimes ancient statues or figureheads are lost at sea, imagining them ‘staring’ out into the depths gives me a pleasurable terror. Inspired by domestic blue and white china found on the sea bed and limbs from ancient statues trawled up in fishermen’s nets I made large ceramic arms. A 3D scan of real arms was digitally routed, cast, slab-moulded in local clay and glazed with blue and white designs inspired by sailor’s tattoos. The arms have a finger-tip to finger-tip span of 6ft, the traditional measurement of a fathom (the word is from the old English word ‘faedm’ meaning to embrace). The arms have been sunk in the sea off Blackpool Sands in Devon for a month before being recovered, broken but poetic relics. If you go down to the beach near there you never know what you might find.
UNDERSEA SHANTY
To celebrate the arms return to the air we sang sea shanties with local band the Nauti Buoys at the local pub, The Green Dragon. I recorded the evening on my mobile then played the songs to my sister’s phone (both in plastic cases) underwater, a fathom apart. Sometimes the sea drowns out the song, known as the Dartmouth Shanty or Shallow Brown. This is the sound being played.