Kate Strachan

Binding ground clay and fibre into long stretches of flexible fabric is just the first part of the laborious procedure Kate Strachan applied during her EKWC residency. She pleated, bent, folded and layered the thin material into various intriguing, delicate forms that convey confusing messages of sensuality and decay. Subtle curves seem to beg for caresses while the paper-thin ceramic sheets appear too delicate or too sharp to handle. After firing, Strachan combined the work with wax, partly to prevent the ceramics from breaking, but mainly to generate new narratives and meaning. In several larger pieces, the layered ceramics become like geological structures while the wax takes on an arctic, glacial quality – there’s melting, there’s rising water, loss and exposure. Between the body and the world, physicality and time take on very different dimensions, their strengths and vulnerabilities of incomparable magnitudes. And here they are, inextricably bound by Strachan’s hand. To make the intricate, layered ceramic components of her work, Strachan began by working with EKWC’s casting clay bodies in their power forms, or by drying and then pulverizing several plastic clay bodies into powder. Through a process of some trial and error, Strachan had to find a set of clay bodies that suited her; the right balance of plasticity, strength, and colouration. Strachan then mixed her clay with water, PVAC glue and (in some cases) several additives and then poured and spread the mixtures thinly onto large glass tables. To these she added various materials (paper, dried clay, oxides/pigments) before letting them dry. The result: paper-thin sheets of unfired clay that she could fold, cut and manipulate into multi-layered sculptural forms. She high-fired this work and used the latter part of her residency to combine the forms with various waxes.