Kate Dorrough
Location
Sydney, Australia
About
Kate Dorrough is represented by Art House Gallery, Sydney, exhibiting since 1996, holding twenty-three solo exhibitions throughout Australia, including numerous group and selected exhibitions. Alongside exhibitions within a regional gallery context, The Cube, Mosman Art Gallery, 2021, the Manning Regional Gallery, 2019 and touring exhibition, ’Heather + Kate Dorrough : Lineage’ 2023/2024; Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Manning, Tamworth and Ararat, TAMA Regional Art Galleries.
Kate has been a finalist in numerous awards; the Calleen, Fishers Ghost, Grace Cossington Smith, Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design, Still Life Art Awards, the Clunes, North Queensland and Gold Coast International Ceramic Art Awards, and the Australian Ceramic Association ‘Course of Objects: the fine lines of inquiry’ Manly Art Gallery & Museum 2014. The Paddington, Mosman, Muswellbrook, Salon des Refuses, Woollahra Small Sculpture Art Prizes, Ravenswood and Meroogal
Australian Women’s Art Prizes. Sculpture in the Vineyards, North Sydney, Sawmillers, Hidden Sculpture Walk and Cementa 24.
She has undertaken numerous artist residencies; Wayout Cementa, Hill End, Bundanon Trust, Art Vault, Fusions, The Cite International des Arts, Paris and La Macina di San Cresci Artist Residency, Italy. Her works are held in Art Gallery of Ballarat, Campbelltown, Grafton, Manning Regional Art Galleries, Manly and Yirrila Art Gallery & Museums collections.
Artist Statement
Experimentation in Ceramics
This practice led talk highlights an investigation and
experimentation in ceramics generated and inspired by a multi
disciplinary art practice.
Initially coming from a painting background, my coiled hand build
stoneware ceramic forms are applied with painterly layers of glaze
and slips combined with an unorthodox approach to multiple
firings, becoming a fusion of glaze, clay, and the gestural mark.
These vessel forms speak of the archaic, acknowledging symbolic
reverences; as container, to hold, now delineated as contemporary,
individual and innovative sculpture. Exhibited alongside large
acrylic paintings on linen, a dialogue is established between the
two mediums, a conversation between paint and clay. This concept is further extended with ceramics becoming part of an installation context, including sculptural forms embedded with ceramic shards.
Exhibited alongside large textile works and video components
transformed to an immersive experience. Riverscape videos
projected onto groupings of ceramic vessels accompanied by
soundscapes reverberate, articulate and abstract the ceramic form.
Recent collaborations with a choreographer and dancer, have led
to further experimentations. The human body responding directly
to the ceramic vessel echoes a layered iconography. The female
body, representation of fertility mirrors an inherent materiality of
form, and sentient vessels become actors on a theatrical stage.