Past Resident
Kate Roberts
Kate Roberts is an artist and educator working in Memphis, TN. Her practice is a mediation on time and its role in the decay of memories, objects, and the spaces they exist within. Inspiration is drawn from historical objects, the architecture around her, or events and choices that shaped a site. Primarily working with clay in its unfired state, Roberts questions the permanence of these objects and sites. The results are installations that explore the connection between the vulnerabilities of the nature of clay in its many forms from dust, to wet slip, to unfired and the mortality of people, objects, and places. The moments of fragmentation found in-between act as metaphors for change, impermanence, and devices for reinterpretation. Distorted and ghostly, the sculptures and installations result in a fleeting, fragile reminder of the consequences of nature, time, and circumstance.
“I grew up in the Southern part of the United States. The landscape is lush and bountiful and at times can be hauntingly visceral. This is due to the areas’ humidity. It causes the pace to be slow … nearly stagnant. Time does not move in a linear fashion, but is suspended. As southerners we live in suspension between myth and truth, between appearance and reality, between life and death, and between the past and present. In my work I try to find that similar moment in-between.”
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