Katie WATCHORN’S practice is rooted in the rhythms of farming and land management. Primarily sculptural, she often employs fickle, agriculturally specific materials in combination with familiar rural motifs and ubiquitous objects and forms from her surrounding environs. These re-situated encounters aim to establish a new awareness of a contemporary rather than a vanished existence.
ARTIST BIO
Katie Watchorn graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 2014 and is currently based in Belfast. Katie was a resident at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2019 as part of their 1000 programming and an artist-in-residence at Fire Station Artists Studios, Dublin until mid 2022. She is a 2023 - 2024 participant of De Ateliers, Amsterdam. Recent exhibitions include Get Away From It All (2022) at Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Zero Grazing at Studio Pavilion as part of Glasgow International 2021 and From Here to There (2021), The Douglas Hyde Gallery.
Get Away From It All (Cromac St), 2022, Katie Watchorn, Poster: 59.4cm (h) x 42cm (w) Cast: Each approx 64cm (L) x 25cm (w), Cast aluminium, colour digital print on 260gsm silk and coated acetate, foil sticker, jubilee clip.
(Above left) Get Away From It All (Off Road) 2022 [detail], Katie Watchorn, Galvanised gantry way, framed promotional Land Rover poster, cast concrete, travel mug, copper plate, oiled mild steel, cast partially polished aluminium, polished bronze dross, glazed ceramic. Image: Louis Haugh
Multi - Mother I, 2021 Year, Katie Watchorn. Image: Matthew Barnes
Often, her work aims to distill the inherently chaotic environments of farming practice and reduce it to its barest outlines, allowing for an abstraction of this otherwise practical environment. In essence, the rurality of her existence is often rendered sterile and ambiguous, a symptom of Katie’s own fluctuation from rural to urban environments, and how these landscapes often compete in her mind.
From Here to There, 2021, Katie Watchorn, dimensions variable, Painted mild steel, headliner fabric, wadding, plywood, cast blended beef fat, Image: Louis Haugh
Get Away From It All, 2022 [detail], Katie Watchorn. Image: Louis Haugh
Her ongoing explorations often focus on agricultural materials that oscillate on the line between obsolescence and innovation. The resulting sculptures are grounded in a contemporary experience of rurality, and respond to agriculture in real time.
Get Away From It All (Café Parisien), 2022, Katie Watchorn, Poster: 59.4cm (h) x 42cm (w), Colour digital print on 260gsm silk and coated acetate, foil sticker, jubilee clip.
Slip Casting Mold in artist's studio, Katie Watchorn.
