About
“My practice consists primarily of large quilted panels in which imagined architectural forms cast high-key shadows in desaturated, empty landscapes. Through the scale of the pieces, in the brittleness of their light and their sugary, pop palette, I try to evoke an eerie yet pleasurable sense of estrangement – as if Di Chirico had been transplanted to 1980s Miami.
I’m intrigued by the ersatz classicism of 80s Postmodernism, including its playful pillaging of 18th-century trompe l’oeil. There is similar playfulness in the conjunction of rigid architecture and pliant cloth in my work: a pleasing interplay between the quilted fabric and the spatial arrangement of the structures it describes. The long lines of stitching delineate bricks and tiles, conjuring a slightly discordant perspective – then shift planes, retreating into the familiar low relief of ‘quilt as decorative object’.”
Kate Williams is a documentary filmmaker turned visual artist who lives and works in Walthamstow, East London. She works with quilted textiles in linen and wool; her themes are the self in postmodernity and the pleasures and pains of the alienation inherent to the age.
