Kate Carey
(she/her)
My work is organic and handmade with a focus on craft such as embroidery, ceramics and quilting. Often, incorporating text, like a diary of lived experience, I recreate feelings of nostalgia related to familial bonds and folk craft, exploring and recreating my own past in hopes of better understanding the duality between family heritage. I am interested in the history of craft and the hierarchies within fine art, the personal stories told through needlework and the tension between functional and conceptual sculpture within the white cube. My work finds inspiration in personal, found or lost objects and the memory these objects hold, individually or collectively, whilst also assessing the reliability of memory and to what extent accurate remembrance is important. My process is intuitive and frequently inspired by material. I aim to work sustainably and not only give new life to old textiles but also incorporate their particular history into the work. My multimedia installations attempt to utilise all these strands of research, blending traditional with the contemporary and ultimately transporting the viewer into my personal world of memory, where I hope some elements of sentimentality will be shared.
‘Milk teeth’
- To protect our sentimental objects, our vessels of memory.
Like Ursula le Guin suggests in carrier bag theory of fiction. The container is the most sacred survival tool for the human race. I am considering this in terms of memory and the objects that carry memory, acting as vessels for survival. Collecting and preserving these objects is a significantly female practice with regards to homemaking but it is also uniquely human. My project is all about seeking out these familiar human experiences. Experiences that others can relate to. Small moments of sentimentality. Experiences that remind others to protect and cherish these fleeting moments as much as possible.
The reality of this installation has become a bit silly, with almost childlike echolalic repetitions and plays on the linguistics of tooth, but with all of this comes humour. Which is yet again inherently human and helps us to rationalise the world. To remain curious about the language we’re taught to build all our knowledge upon and play with its possible variations keeps our childlike spark alive. To question the reality or truthfulness of memory keeps us interested in the world around us.
‘Milk teeth’ explores the ephemeral nature of losing baby teeth and the transference of memories onto these bodily objects, time spent with each tooth and the maturing of these memories to eventually reach ‘wisdom’.
But is this even our wisest.
Stoneware ceramic teeth, embroidery thread, 1cm X 2.5cm X 245cm
For Sale: Price on request
Milk tooth, foam, plastic box, 4.5 X4.5 X 2.5 cm
Wooden box, Ceramic stoneware teeth, 55 X 35 X 4.5cm
For Sale: Price on request
Installation view of 'one tooth', 11 embroidered stoneware tiles, 21 cm X 163 cm
For Sale: Price on request
Installation view of 'Wisdom', wooden stairs, embroidered carpet, 74cm X 207cm X 695cm
For Sale: Price on request
Silk, wadding, wooden dowel, 140 X 62cm
For Sale: Price on request
Silk, wadding, wooden dowel
For Sale: Price on request
Cotton book, wadding, ribbon, 26 X24cm, 18 pages
For Sale: Price on request
Ceramic stoneware vessels, embroidered, 10x7x14cm / 6x6x7cm
For Sale: Price on request
Ceramic, embroidery thread. 15x15cm series of two
For Sale: Price on request