My practice is research based, I am open minded about mediums and enjoy a fusion of craft and conceptual art.  I take great pleasure in the particularities of each of the mediums I use and am passionately hands on. Using unusual or poetically appropriate materials is a key feature of my work; site specfically gathered ash, charcoal, mud, sand or stones, beachcombed fabric or even cowshit.  I have always been inspired by history; art, maritime and women's rights being key areas of interest and I am a voracious bookworm.  

I am lead tutor for the National Art and Design Saturday Club at Plymouth College of Art https://saturday-club.org .  I create workshops for schools and for groups of adults and children as well as individual tutoring.  I am also a tutor and Associate Artist at the beautiful Coombe Farm Studios.  

To arrange interviews or for any further information please contact Kate on

email - art@katemarshall.co.uk mobile - (+44) (0)7973 520 515

KATE MARSHALL CV

2013 – 2014 MA Fine Art as Contemporary Practice, Falmouth School of Art (Distinction)
2001 - 2004 BA Fine Art and Art History, Goldsmiths College, London
2000 - 2001 Foundation Art and Design, Falmouth College of Art

SELECTED PAST EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS

SOLO SHOWS

2016 - Dartington Gallery, Dartington Hall, Devon

2011- Dartmouth, Flavel Arts Centre, Dartmouth

2009 - Unsettler, Live performance drawing and sound art, The Empire Gallery, Vyner Street, London

2009 - Live Life Drawing at Movida, London

2008 - Blue Stockings, The Empire Gallery, Vyner Street, London

2007 - Dirty Pretty Paintings - The Empire Gallery, Vyner Street, London

2007 - Sweet Nothings - including live painting performance at the Lange Nacht der Museen, Bourgeois Pig, Heidelberg, Germany

2006 - Sweet Nothings, Eyestorm Exeter, Exeter, Devon

GROUP SHOWS

2017 - DRAWN- RWA, Bristol 

2016 - Nomads, Scuola Grafica, Venice.

2014 - MA group show, Cynical Optimism, Falmouth Wharves, Falmouth, Cornwall

2011 - Trace, Alice Leach, Kate Marshall and Clem So, Totnes, Devon

2010 - Book Art , Exhibition of Handmade Books, Dartington Hall, Devon

2010 - Gazing Extravaganza , MA Curating show at Dartington College, Devon

2009 - The Big Show, The Hamptons, NY, USA

2009 - There's Still Life - Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London

2008 - What's Up With Illustration? Exhibition and live drawing evening, Mauger Modern Art, Bath

2008 - The Painting Room, Transition Gallery, London

2008 - The Big Show, The Hamptons, NY, USA

2008 - Forget Me Not (curated by Gristle Mountain), Fort Brockhurst, Portsmouth

2006 - London Style, Eyestorm Milan, Milan, Italy

2006 - My Life in Art, Broadway Market, London

2006 - Noise Festival at the Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool

2005 - Space Studios, Hackney, London

2004 - Recent Graduates Exhibition, AAF - selection of graduates from the nation's top art schools, London

COLLABORATIONS

2016 onwards - Assosiate Artist Coombe Farm Studios, Devon. 

2012 – Collaboration with curator Gareth Ballyn, Tagore Palimpsest, Tagore festival live art event and exhibition, Dartington Estate, Devon

2011 – Collaboration with curator Gareth Ballyn , Bitterweed, live creation of handmade zines and exhibition, Dartington Estate, Devon

2009 - The Drowning Room, Collaborative live drawing and sound installation with curator Gareth Ballyn and sound artist Ben Hudson, The Courtyard Tower, The Great Hall, Dartington Hall, Devon

2008 - Unseen South Hams, artist curated show in pop-up space, The Old Library, Dartmouth, Devon

RESIDENCIES

2016 - Printmaking Resideny, Scuola Grafica,  Venice.

2013-14 - Live sewing in Porthmeor Studios, St Ives

2013 – Solo show and artist in residence, Drink, Shop & Do, London

2011 - Residency, RIACE, Rhaghurajpur Artisans Village, Orissa, India

WORKSHOPS

2016 onwards lead tutor for the National Art and Design Saturday Club at Plymouth College of Art.

Regular workshops for Dartmouth and Blackawton Schools. 

2012 – 2018 Tutor, Printmaking from the river, experimental printmaking tutor, Coombe Farm Studios, Devon

2012- Workshop leader, WestEnd Daytrip, workshop with NEETs, Plymouth, Devon

2007 -2018  Member of the Dartington Printmakers, Dartington, Devon

KATE MARSHALL ARTIST STATEMENT SEPTEMBER 2014

Whilst night-sailing round the coast from my home town of Dartmouth, bound for Falmouth to start my MA, my thoughts drifted down to the boats and souls below; all those who never made it home. My current project has sailed away from actual shipwrecks into metaphors (and clichés); it is inspired by the romance and superstition surrounding sailing, boats, the sea, loss; the relics that remain and the stories they suggest. I am interested in the curious connections and frictions between the sublime and the domestic. I use traditional techniques and materials coupled with more high-tech technologies, mixing up craft and conceptual art, gendered mediums, pathos and bathos. The materiality of materials fascinates me; their histories, techniques, lingos, smells, feel and look.

SEA BLANKET

For years I have gathered fabric from tidelines, not really having any ideas as to what to do with it. It joined the other ‘treasures’ I found; shoved into pockets or backs of drawers or bags. But this year, the storms brought huge amounts of bounty and I have started to sew it together into a growing patchwork. The beach I find most fabric on is Blackpool Sands, the beach closest to my childhood home. The process is laborious but pleasurable (apart from stabbing myself with the needle), it is a good time to think or chat depending on where I am sewing. I have sewn on beaches, on my boat, in bed, in studios, pubs and in the cellars of the Porthmeor Studios in St Ives. As I sew I like to wonder about where, when and how the fabric ended up in the sea. The patchwork will grow and grow, becoming enormous, and in theory, never ending. It could be a blanket, a dress, a sail or a shroud. The act of sewing to excess invokes women from myths and fairytales; Penelope’s daily weaving and nightly un-ravelling, the hapless heroine helped by Rumplestiltskin to complete the impossible task of spinning straw into gold and the swan princess sewing stinging nettles into nets. But sewing is also a revolutionary technological invention for it allowed humankind to fashion containers, clothes and boats. There is still one bunch of burly chaps who sew; sailors and fishermen. Sailors have traditionally been competent stitchers for sails, clothes and nets need making and repairing, even their spare time was spent embroidering (more butchly known as crewel work) or using the needles to engrave scrimshaws or tattoo themselves or each other. If a sailor died at sea he would be sewn into an old sail or his hammock, the last stitch going through his nose, just to make sure he was dead, before he was consigned to the watery depths.

FATHOM

Relics from shipwrecks might be glamorous and valuable gold or silver treasure but the everyday objects like china, belt buckles or blankets are just as fascinating and somehow more poignant in their domesticity and ordinariness. Sometimes ancient statues or figureheads are lost at sea, imagining them ‘staring’ out into the depths gives me a pleasurable terror. Inspired by domestic blue and white china found on the sea bed and limbs from ancient statues trawled up in fishermen’s nets I made large ceramic arms. A 3D scan of real arms was digitally routed, cast, slab-moulded in local clay and glazed with blue and white designs inspired by sailor’s tattoos. The arms have a finger-tip to finger-tip span of 6ft, the traditional measurement of a fathom (the word is from the old English word ‘faedm’ meaning to embrace). The arms have been sunk in the sea off Blackpool Sands in Devon for a month before being recovered, broken but poetic relics. If you go down to the beach near there you never know what you might find.

UNDERSEA SHANTY

To celebrate the arms return to the air we sang sea shanties with local band the Nauti Buoys at the local pub, The Green Dragon. I recorded the evening on my mobile then played the songs to my sister’s phone (both in plastic cases) underwater, a fathom apart. Sometimes the sea drowns out the song, known as the Dartmouth Shanty or Shallow Brown. This is the sound being played.

Previous Press Coverage

The Financial Times 2011 [view]

The Sunday Times, December 2008 [view]

The Square Mile, July 2008 [view]

The London Paper, April 2008 [view]

The Times, February 2008 [view]

999.com, February 2008 [view]

The Sunday Times, August 2007 [view]

The Sunday Times, June 2007 [view]

The Big Issue, November 2006 [view]

Exeter Living, November 2006 [view]

Herald Express, October 2006 [view]

BBC 2 - Blast Friday!, September 2006 [view]

info@katemarshall.co.uk all images copyright kate marshall 2010