Artist Residency and Exhibition in Tuscany

In May 2018 I attended a residency at La Macina di San Cresci, Tuscany, Italy. Inspired by the historical setting, the countryside and hills of Tuscany I created experimental works influenced by the italian Arte Provera movement alongside the ancient Etruscan artifacts in surrounging Museums. This culminated in an exhibition and installation within the chapel adjoining the residency complex. Titled, ‘Pieve at San Cresci of Domesticity, The Archeological Museum of Domesticity and the Everyday’. The work explored the tensions between creating art and being a mother of small children.

ARTIST STATEMENT :

"The Installation, ‘Church of Domesticity, the Archeological Museum of Domesticity and the Everyday’ evolved from a two week residency at La Macina di San Cresci. Inspired by the Etruscan artefacts and the frescoes of Piero della Francesca (at Arezzo) I aimed to produce simplified forms and a series of coloured sketches. This initial proposal expanded to include other forms; hand made papier-mâché, timber and cardboard sculptures, fabric and drawings. Together these culminated as an installation in the church of San Cresci at the conclusion of my residency. The beautiful church became a sculptural space in itself,  a place of transcendence.

 

Using humble everyday materials from a domestic space, cardboard, paper, glue, and materials left by other artists in residence, objects were reused and reformed to create simple iconic forms. These forms speak of often unacknowledged work; the work of the housewife, the rearing of children, cooking, washing. Banished, from the outer world these objects are placed within the inner celestial world of the church, in doing so, celebrate the everyday.

Inspired by the Arte Provera movement, an Italian movement of dissent from the 1960’s, 1970’s, with its use of everyday found objects, challenging the corporate and established institutions.

 

Being a mother and attending the residency with young children, (and a husband who did the child minding while I worked), I also wanted to include an autobiographical element to the work. The prevalence of the mother and child with local roadside shrines and a rich historical art tradition of the Madonna and child took on a greater significance for me. The work done to maintain, support and hold the family together, mirrors the churches function, historically holding and supporting the community as a whole.

I also refer to the act of making, of being an artist, and its struggles to create within the limitations of time and commitments of the everyday. The artist’s desire to transcend these limitations in order to speak of an abstracted and a greater symbolic essence.

 

Referring to religious iconography within the installation; the child, washing of the feet, hands of prayer, the sacred cloth, the curtain, the vessel, relics, the circle, the shrine, and the symbolic use of colour, I wanted the work to be both historic and contemporary. Archeological remains and fragments are objects of contemplation and at the same time relevant, alive and transcendent."

'The Installation, ‘Church of Domesticity, the Archeological Museum of Domesticity and the Everyday’, Paper mache, acrylic paint, textile, drawings, 2018

La Macina di San Cresci catagloue, 2018

Featured in the Artist Profile Magazine

Featured in the Artist Profile magazine, in the Process section, Issue 41, 2017, p 130 – 132, I discuss my current work and art practice, excerpts from my article are:

” My work has moved away from any specific landscape to become my own inner recollections, a reduced and abstracted essence of the land. The river, the trees, the rocks and broad spatial vistas become a series of signs or totems”

“Embedded in my works are memories and recollections of my youth, swimming in the Wollombi Brook, with its shallow, amber gumleaf-stained edges moving to the cool mysterious deep green umber depths. for me the river is a place of connection; a journey undertaken and a vehicle back to a slower pace and sense of place.”

“abstracted gestural calligraphic marks float above an expansive space of bleached and stained canvas. Colours transfuse from pinks to gold to blues, depending on the heat of the day. The marks made on the land are like a text or a series of musical notes, an implied language to be understood or deciphered. The works acknowledge our need to understand the land in order to work with and preserve ts fragile ecosystems.”

'Kate Dorrough', Process section, Artist Profile Magazine, Issue 41, 2017, p 130 – 132, 2017