Kate St Clair

 'I am inspired by the rich sensations of living and dying life. The crunching of pine needles beneath my feet. Decaying leaves under the muddy surface of a puddle. The lichen that is inseparable from its stone. I believe stories are held in the landscape.
I explore to understand. I understand by exploring. I take my own photographs and use them as collage material, layering the surface to build an image. I cut into the photos because I enjoy the tension of the pieces reassembled. It’s like a kaleidoscope, or a fractured lens that I twist until the image forms. I shake up the images to rattle the eyes into a different way of seeing.
I believe in the power of displacement, how the process shows us things we may have overlooked. When we become aware of all the subtleties around us, we open a new world into ways of seeing'  (Kate St Clair, http://stkatie.tumblr.com)

'Wallow' Ice spheres melting over canvas in gallery by Kate St Clair

I have been drawn to Kate St Clair's work through her use of the freezing and defrosting method. Her introductory statement about her work also interested me as there are many similarities to my own practice methods. The contrasts of life /death, the 'understanding' through exploring the 'displacing' of  things to make us look at matter in different ways, facilitating the 'seeing' of things/materials in an alternative I order to help us become aware and more appreciative.
​The work seen above is an installation of collected debris and pigments frozen into spheres and left to defrost over canvases within a gallery/exhibition space. The content of these spheres eventually becomes amalgamated onto the canvas as over time the 'frozen' liquid defrosts. This is something similar to what I have already been exploring; frozen pigment defrosting over paper. Kates work contains more depth and narrative through the collected pieces within the spheres. My concerns at present are the 'water' content and the' freezing' method as an aesthetic. The defrosting represents the 'fragility' of life/materiality.
​She also plays around with the time aspect of the defrosting, the movement and performance the detritus within the forms play out as they move collide and fall. This is recorded through a time lapse video; something I need to think about!