Katie Owen: Third Year Work

I seem to remember saying I would try to keep this updated more often...

Well third year's going really quickly, already halfway through it and since my last post I have experimented a lot, made new pieces, written a dissertation and now have enough ideas to take me into my final degree show work.

To briefly summarise the direction my work has taken since the project started here is my statement as it currently reads:

The inspiration behind my current project lies in industrial structures situated on the outskirts of towns and cities. Referred to as ‘Edgelands’, these are places which tend to be overlooked as we don’t come into prolonged contact with them on a day to day basis.

My interests lie particularly in objects and structures which have surpassed their original function and provoke questions of curiosity when we engage with them - What were they? Why have they been left in this state? How long for? What could they be?

Uninhabitable and left to decay, they now lie on paths connecting us on our routine journeys from place to place, left only with the marks we leave as evidence of our passing through, marks which I aim to explore through processes such as enamelling. Through both these brief encounters and the process of decay, aspects of these structures become altered over time, changing them, presenting us with their history and a different narrative each time we pass by. This forms our connection with places like these.

They speak of their previous function and potential future through a layering of narratives. They cannot be fixed in time, they will continue to change. By working in multiples and through the interchangeable nature of my work, I can address this by encouraging people to engage with my pieces and make their own decisions to construct their own narratives.

Here are some photos of some of my more experimental pieces from the beginning of the project and also leading up to where I currently am: