Daily residency updates on here and instagram | Follow @asylum_artist_quarter and the artist for content.

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Instagram | @822159_femart

Email | CaitlinDoherty1995@hotmail.co.uk


| Artist statement |

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During Caitlin’s month at Asylum you will gain insight into the process and the various approaches she undertakes. The most important one to begin with is walking. Taking a psychogeographical stance to her surroundings, drifting through Birmingham and Wolverhampton at different times of the day, navigating around the city, out to the suburbs with no planned route. This will be an integral part of her creative process. Caitlin listens to her instinct/intuition, often drawing her further away from the busy, crowded cities. The photographs taken during the walks document the insignificant, in between spaces, the neglected, forgotten about spaces; empty shops, derelict buildings and rubbish filled walkways, tucked away not to be seen. The notes contain thoughts or words that come to mind in a space or when walking. The sketches/collages respond to the scale of these built up environments, they are made using 6ft x 4ft pieces of paper, exterior paint, charcoal, found materials, spray paint, and sometimes ripping and burning fragments of the paper. The sketches informed an ongoing series of 12ft x 9ft dust sheet paintings that are smothered in clay, black exterior paint, cement and charcoal. This is mostly applied by hand and soaked in muddy water using sponges. Caitlin uses large paint brushes, leaving bold, harsh gestures on the material; the brush strokes left raw and exposed against the worn out, muddy cotton sheets hanging lifelessly.

 

Experimenting with various materials and techniques creates a starting point for Caitlin to build from, as she doesn’t like to feel constrained to just one idea. In order to create an ambitious body of work, resulting in the creation of an installation/experience; the transition from her studio space into the empty gallery space is the inspiration. Caitlin is also working in experimental video and sound. Throughout her time in the gallery space she will be expanding her creative skills and installing sounds recordings as well as moving image/experimental videos to illuminate a more evocative or immersive experience. The unpredictability of working in a space is the significant shift in practice and thought that Caitlin needs, everything being explored and questioned and experimented is subject to change. Caitlin wants to utilise the space to allow that to happen and to have no limitations. She looks at this opportunity as a short term artist residency.

 

“As an artist it has been absolutely impossible to not respond to the pandemic and its impacts on our relationship with public space and the way in which we use it. Along with our day-to-day interactions with people. It follows you wherever you go. I returned to my studio post lockdown and everything had changed, my commute was different, people were interacting differently, new rules on how to manoeuvre and interact, the enforcement of social distancing, no group meetings, the list goes on.” – Caitlin Doherty, 2020.

 

Interested in anthropology and sociology, Caitlin investigates how our ‘normal’ experiences of public space are shifting. New social boundaries have emerged, there is a sense of uncertainty, fear, distance and disconnect between people. The precariousness of the social, economic and political shift happening due to the pandemic causes this anxiety, the idea that we must maintain distance, adapt to new policies and laws being enforced at such a rate it’s hard to keep up and understand how this affects us long term.

 

We’re all living in unusual and uncertain times with social limitations and new rules being enforced across the UK every other day. As a result Caitlin would like to safely engage with you online. To follow Caitlin’s journey be sure to follow her instagram account @822159_femart for live streams, experimental videos and sound installations, process based videos/time lapses, photos, painting, polls, questions and much more. Follow @asylum_artist_quater as Caitlin will be taking over the Instagram account and posting content at various points of her time spent in the gallery to engage with a wider audience. This is an unique opportunity that offers an innovative creative approach to navigating and understanding such life changing and challenging times.

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Content supplied and made by the artist*