Kate Roberts
Walking on Ghosts
Kate Roberts finds beauty in the ephemerality and decay of objects and memories.
- May 2 - 30, 2019
- Opening: Thursday, May 2
I see buildings falling in Glasgow. I see rubble. I ask myself where that rubble goes. I discover that it’s crushed and then used to build new pedestrian streets – so people are walking on ghosts of tower blocks. –Cyprien Gaillard. ‘New Romantic: In Conversation with Jonathan Griffin’, 2010.
Walking on Ghosts contemplates the mortality of people and the spaces they exist within. Inspired by remnants of past inhabitants at 101 Prefontaine Place South, 4Culture’s gallery and offices, Kate Roberts’ clay dust installations and prints investigate our perception of this changing terrain.
Through a combination of disintegration and filtration, the clay dust images recede and emerge from layer to layer. These moments of fragmentation act as a metaphor for change, impermanence, and as a device for reinterpretation. Distorted and ghostly, the works serve as a fleeting, fragile reminder of the consequences of nature, time, and circumstance.
About the Artist
Kate Roberts is native of Greenville, South Carolina. She received both her MFA and BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2015 and 2010 respectively. Roberts has traveled extensively and completed residencies and internships at art centers around the world, including Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Montana, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, La Meridiana in Italy, Cite International des Arts in Paris, Project Art in Massachusetts, and Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill in Massachusetts.
Her work has been shown in museums such as the Tampa Art Museum in Tampa, Florida, Frick Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York and included in major exhibitions such as Scripps Ceramic Annual and Ceramic Top 40. Most recently, she completed a large in situ ceramic installation as part of the Parcours Ceramique Carougeois Biennial in Geneva, Switzerland. She has lectured at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington and the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin. She currently resides in Memphis, Tennessee and is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Memphis.