Kate McLeod

Aberrant works

7th August – 14th September 2014

“This exhibition of ceramics is an abstract hiatus in a figurative sculptural practice. I was inspired to temporarily dispatch the figure following my travels last year to Japan and while working in Lisbon for 6 months. The arts and crafts of Japan and the architecture of Lisbon led me to make a series of works that explore the vessel and simple geometric forms on rolled-out slabs of clay.

In Lisbon I collected junk from the streets – tiles, off-cuts of wood, cobbles, furniture – that I utilised as props and moulds to create clay forms.

This scavenging and improvisation also takes place in the studio, as I use the ephemera, scraps and detritus of the making process to make new works.

When rolling out the clay and trimming the edges for the works inside Quay House I was left with fragments and offcuts of clay, these I used to create the tiny formal assemblages that are displayed in the window gallery. The scale of the work has allowed for rapid experimentation in both form and ceramic techniques.”

The collection of small works exhibited in the M2 Gallery window gallery are displayed on glass shelves akin to the museum vitrine. The objects can be viewed as sketches made up of multiple parts, which are balanced or stacked. The compositions are unfixed and the individual parts can be rearranged. This extends to works found inside Quay House, including simply decorated ceramic slabs that slot inside the cavity space of a roughly sawn door. Creating slippages in the work is important and here the possibility of shifting and rebuilding the pieces allows a space in which the work can be redefined.

Kate McLeod lives and works in London. She graduated from Goldsmiths College in 2004 and the Slade School of Fine Art in 2009. In recent years she has worked in Belgium and Lisbon and been an artist-in-residence in Italy. She has exhibited her work around the UK and Europe. She is a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors.