Katharine Prendergast

I stand in awe of half constructed buildings, the arrangement of colours and textures of vast decaying walls. The foundation skeleton of a utilitarian structure can be a monumental object in itself. Much like Sean Scully’s Wall of Light paintings and Thomas Scheibitz works, these objects have an isolated lofty grandeur, yet in their current state serve only the most basic functional role. This unintended beauty has hints of the sublime in its psychological temperature.

The structures are devoid of people so my relationship with them is isolated, reflective and sombre, hoping to act as a channel for a beauty that is dark and contradictory. Much like the urban structures which inspire them - my works themselves are solid, transmitting a sheer physicality: large canvas boards, mounted sheets of metal influenced by Richard Serra’s Fernando Pessoa. The material of paint itself, rhythms, colour and pattern are all primarily intuitive formal concerns of the painting. The airless physicality of paint plays with the intended tension between the simple unintended beauty and an intimidating confrontation of the structures. In terms of the physical surface of the paint I draw inspiration from Max Ernst’s use of Frottage, Jonathan Lasker and Prunella Clough.

I am concerned with representing a conundrum of space, I reconstruct sights using memory, photo montage and negotiations i.e. letting the painting direct what happens. The resulting images hang between a defined space and a minimal arrangement of colours shapes and textures. They create moments of conflict that jar with the logic of the implied space, negotiating a ‘space between’.

Until now my works have been proportionally wall based. The logical evolution of the work suggests experimenting with sculpture and installation. Perhaps this is why I’m inclined to contextualise my practice by considering the work of artists such as, Judd, Burden, Tony Bevan, Willard Boepple, Brown’s pallet knife structures and Serra as well as Joseph Albers, Brice Marden, Sol LeWitt and Robert Ryman.