Oct, 2019
GOLD
ARTIST'S TALK. Sunday 27 October, Platform Arts, Riverside Drive, Dundee, DD1 4BX, 4.00pm-5.30pm
Kathryn Rattray
Artist's Statement
‘Inside Outside’ amplifies the voices of women who are, or have been, involved in the sex industry in Scotland. These are voices not often heard in the mainstream press, and often drowned out on social media.’ (http://www.insideoutsidescotland.info/)
Gold is Kathryn Rattray’s latest installation for Inside Outside Scotland commissioned by the Nomas* Projects, Dundee. This multi-media installation is simplistic yet breathtaking, merging the ideas of light, weightlessness, falling, spinning and decomposition. A reflective and thought provoking trajectory which allows the viewer to slip into the mind of the mask. The masks’ white innocence hauntingly gaze out at you. Muted and silenced, all they can do is sway and spin. Like a mind dealing with trauma, each window holds a secret.
The installation begins with a white mask encased with soft white feathers, ethereal they hang heavenly, they are both weightless and frozen in time, protecting and shielding. A gentle reminder of who has gone before us and like the memories of your podgy hand as a child, blowing a feather into the wind carrying wishes, hopes and dreams.
The central windows are made up of three blank masks doused in coloured lights. The vacant masks hang like butchers meat waiting to be picked, wrapped taken home and stripped to the bone. These impressionable masks are naive to the industry, prime targets, ready to be groomed and dehumanized as they hope for the better life of an empty promise.
Painfully, the corner window represents the pimp, the hustler, the dealer and the trafficker. The golden mask of deceit is used by these people as they execute the lure of riches to strip the mask bare. Bound, tied, cold and hungry the masks are forced into a life of abuse. The golden mask floats above the checkered floor, which is a nod in the direction of the elite who wield power and control to buy the masks as a commodity to use, abuse and sell for their own gratification.
The Mirrors allow you to be part of the installation and interact vicariously as you look inside looking outside, a narcissists dream perhaps. The golden mask is crowned with fresh blood red roses that will slowly wilt and decompose, this is symbolic of our fragility. The less you care, the less you nurture the faster decomposition sets in.
Finally, there are white masks floating around the golden mask, it’s a representation that with every human involved in prostitution their human rights are negated, they are metaphorically flogged and hung by the sinister perpetrators of their crimes wearing the golden mask.
Artist Bio:
Kathryn Rattray is visual artist from Dundee. She works as a freelance photographer and is an emerging installation artist in her own right. Kathryn obtained a BA (Hons) in Marketing and Management from the University of Abertay in 2000 and on graduating spent the next two and half years living in Tokyo. Kathryn is self-taught in all aspects of her photography and artist's practice.
Over the past decade Kathryn has worked extensively across her home town of Dundee where she has established herself as a photographer working in the arts. During this time Kathryn has created a diverse and extensive portfolio as well as being commissioned to undertake a large body of commercial and private client work. Her photographs have been represented online, in art magazines, books and other media. The arts are her passion and she excels when engaged in this field. Her style is bold and contemporary with an exceptional use of colour and her admiration of the changing nature of light is central to how she creates her work.
In May this year she was invited by Swiss Art Expo Art Fair to exhibit with the ARTBOX/PROJECT in Zurich, this saw her exhibit for the first time outside Scotland. Her next trip with the ARTBOX PROJECTS to Miami this December, where she will be exhibiting her work in Wynwood Art District of Miami as part of Miami Art | Basel 2019.
Kathryn lives in Dundee with her two children Daisy and Jacob, she spends her free time filling their lives with the adventures, they can often be seen together as she photographs events within the city.
Further Information:
№ 57/99
№ 1/1
Next project: → Opaque Documents
Previous project: ← UNHU
