Elli Walsh Essay, Assistant Editor Artist Profile Magazine,  ‘River Language’ 2020

Video Walkthrough: Kate Dorrough – River Language from Arthouse Gallery on Vimeo.

1 – 16 May 2020, Art House Gallery, Sydney

This exhibition has evolved from my ongoing exploration of the river within my art practice. This is not a specific landscape but an evolution of inner recollections and previous art residencies, becoming a reduced and abstracted essence of the river.

Working in both the discipline of painting and hand built stoneware ceramics, the exhibition explores the interrelation between the gestural painterly mark and the hand built three-dimensional form, creating a conversation between paint and clay.

The process of layering paint and clay, reveals and disguises the mark, it echoes a layering of told and untold stories and collected memories of the river. Calligraphic marks become a series of signs or totems, a language of layered histories and unearthed mysterious relics.

The marks made on these watery landscapes 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 river in order to work with and preserve its fragile ecosystems.

The process of layering paint and clay, reveals and disguises the mark, it echoes a layering of told and untold stories and collected memories of the river. Calligraphic marks become a series of signs or totems, a language of layered histories and unearthed mysterious relics.

The marks made on these watery landscapes 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 river in order to work with and preserve its fragile ecosystems.

The exhibition is a conversation between paint and clay