Movement and materiality work in tandem in unexpected ways. Kim’s open expression of gesture through paint converses with Fiona’s mark-making in merino and silk textiles.
Both artists investigate the potential for a tangible or visceral response either mentally, spiritually and/or physically.
Kim Shaw’s main concern in her art practice is to translate the silent comprehension of motion in the same way that dance explores human movement through the medium of the body. Movement in daily life is constantly encountered but seldom given thought to regarding its meaning or impacts.
For Kim, movement and stillness are not separate; they are integrated, and they inform one another. Stillness is not the absence of movement: it is dynamic and compatible movement.
Fiona Cable asks, can mystical artistic gestures affect the mind, spirit or body in a world where technology separates us from the tangible and the visceral?
Fiona’s practice moves the focus away from cognitive and intellectual pursuits symptomatic of a late-capitalist society, toward the intrinsic needs of being human, female and body conscious. She does this through the process of felting and binding textiles, drawing on myth, magical practices, and old alphabets.
February 2020