Kate Strain

Community update with Kate Strain

Kate Strain is the Artistic Director of Grazer Kunstverein. Based between Graz, Austria and Dublin, her ongoing curatorial projects include Department of Ultimology, a new department established with Fiona Hallinanin in 2016 at Trinity College Dublin and RGKSKSRG, the paired curatorial practice of Rachael Gilbourne and Kate Strain.

We were fortunate to work with Kate on two projects. The first, I like to eat with my hands, took place in 2015 under the collaborative practice RGKSKSRG. The second, The Centre For Dying On Stage #3, took place in 2016 with the support of The Arts Council‘s Curator in Residence scheme. Kate generously took some time out of her hectic schedule to answer a few of our questions.

I like to eat with my hands: Exhibition

Wexford Arts Centre
Saturday 27th August at 3pm

The exhibition I like to eat with my hands is the outcome of our 2015 Autumn Residency residency involving five contemporary, international artists. The participants were artists Taro Furukata, Ann Maria Healy, dancer/choreographer Claire Huber and writer/artist duo KVM – Ju Hyun Lee and Ludovic Burel.

For a period of eight-weeks in autumn last year, they re-located their practices to our deeply rural environment at Cow House Studios. Together, they immersed themselves in research between the studios, the land and the shared accommodation, to create new work, share skills, and reflect on their own and others’ individual practices. Within this activity, the question was asked: can situating oneself within these new ‘Pig Earth’ surroundings potentially radicalise an existing working process?

Their answer comes to you in the form of this exhibition. It comes in the lonesomeness of Taro Furukata’s poignant attempts to assimilate (physically metabolising new spaces in the sanctity of his actual body) and to reach back home (phoning his Grandma for hand-me-down recipes); in Claire Huber’s struggle out of the physical and metaphysical confines of the body (dancing with and in nature in a wild and comic reach for meaning); in Ann Maria Healy’s search for spiritual guidance or resonance amongst dated mythological traditions (removed and ritualised in their almost but not quite kitsch physical form), and in KVM’s more than skin-deep transference of cultural mores (echoes of nasty cultural realities, warts and all).

RGKSKSRG is the paired curatorial practice of Rachael Gilbourne and Kate Strain.

Image: Ann Maria Healy, Beating to be real, 2016, HD video still.

Hallucination! on the Farm

Schnitzen einer Teufelsmaske, 1965 – Gareth Kennedy, research image as part of Die unbequeme Wissenschaft (The Uncomfortable Science), 2014 Cow House Studios | Hallowe’en Open Day Saturday 31 October 2015, 12noon – 5pm  Please join us for Hallucination! On the Farm as Cow House Studios hosts its annual Open Day. This year, guests are invited […]