Artist's Statement

Kate Murdoch is an artist whose work reflects a fascination with the passage of time and the contrast between the permanence of objects and the fragility of human existence.

The objects we surround ourselves with are loaded with meaning, reflecting both our internal emotional world and the external image we present to others. From the mundane to the meaningful, they are steeped in social and political history. Objects are a part of our identity; they provide us with a sense of self and reveal our connections to the wider world.

Kate works with found objects such as photos, fabrics and ceramics, mostly dating from the last century. As a self-taught artist, her work is primarily autobiographical and involves a journey through a lifelong collection of assorted fragments and paraphernalia drawn from her own life and from the lives of others.

At the heart of Kate's work is an unravelling of past memories; the desire to make sense of and preserve certain aspects of the past is a driving force behind it. Her practice involves a process of selection, reshaping and placing the objects she works with in order to reinterpret them and give them a new significance.

As a child growing up with a hearing loss, Kate was perhaps more aware of her visual environment and developed a keen eye for detail. Throughout her adult life she has maintained a continuing fascination for the way in which people's homes are arranged, the objects that adorn them and the manner in which they are displayed. Past employment experience in this respect is of great significance as, through paying regular home visits to families and the elderly, Kate gained years of insight into the way people from varying social and cultural backgrounds lived their lives and kept their homes.

Often interactive in its presentation, Kate's work invites the viewer to form his or her own associative memories, attachments and responses to the assemblages and installations she presents, allowing them in some cases to literally 'get a feel' for her work by encouraging the handling of some of the actual objects.