Kate Burling
www.kateburling.com
@kateburling
Statement:
My paintings are bodies, and they must bleed.
In pursuit of internal investigation, my paintings mimic and violate organic structures within the sensitive body. Ear and pelvis-like caverns are twisted and swaddled into a phantasmagoria of fluid apparitions. Hardly contained by its hazy boundaries, a bloody magma expands from inside the canvas, pulsing and weeping. The paintings have the unmistakeable presence of a body, vibrating with tension and dissipating explosive energy from their core.
Materiality and texture are important to me. In recent work, I have used my fingers to rub pigment between the woven structure of canvas and hessian. The brightest colours sit at the deepest point while shadows and highlights skim the surface. This sculptural approach allows the paintings to consume the canvas. The work is given a permanence, a relationship with the material it occupies, and I feel I am given access to its bodily core.
I have recently extended my practice into three-dimensional space, using horse saddles to reflect ideas within the paintings. An amalgamation of flesh and object, the saddle describes the negative space between animal and rider. In its found form, the saddle is an abstraction of the body, a membrane between human-made and organic, and the site of a sentient, bodily relationship. By manipulating and repurposing these functional objects as artworks, I accommodate a connection between image and space. The viewer, now occupying the realm of the artwork, is welcomed into the conversation, with the potential for physical, as well as psychological immersion.
www.kateburling.com
@kateburling
Statement:
My paintings are bodies, and they must bleed.
In pursuit of internal investigation, my paintings mimic and violate organic structures within the sensitive body. Ear and pelvis-like caverns are twisted and swaddled into a phantasmagoria of fluid apparitions. Hardly contained by its hazy boundaries, a bloody magma expands from inside the canvas, pulsing and weeping. The paintings have the unmistakeable presence of a body, vibrating with tension and dissipating explosive energy from their core.
Materiality and texture are important to me. In recent work, I have used my fingers to rub pigment between the woven structure of canvas and hessian. The brightest colours sit at the deepest point while shadows and highlights skim the surface. This sculptural approach allows the paintings to consume the canvas. The work is given a permanence, a relationship with the material it occupies, and I feel I am given access to its bodily core.
I have recently extended my practice into three-dimensional space, using horse saddles to reflect ideas within the paintings. An amalgamation of flesh and object, the saddle describes the negative space between animal and rider. In its found form, the saddle is an abstraction of the body, a membrane between human-made and organic, and the site of a sentient, bodily relationship. By manipulating and repurposing these functional objects as artworks, I accommodate a connection between image and space. The viewer, now occupying the realm of the artwork, is welcomed into the conversation, with the potential for physical, as well as psychological immersion.
Listening Saddles
68 x 42.5cm
Oil on canvas
2022
68 x 42.5cm
Oil on canvas
2022