Curated by Maolíosa Boyle and Jonathan Cummins  

For her first exhibition in Ireland, sculptor Katrina Palmer presents ‘The three stories are flattened’. Palmer is an artist who is changing our understanding of sculpture. For her, writing is making, and sculpture is a process of investigation employing language and story. Books are central to her practice – The Dark Object (2010), The Fabricator’s Tale (2014), End Matter (2015) – and the worlds she creates on the page are often revisited in her exhibitions through live readings, site-specific recordings, and constructed environments.

Within her exhibitions Palmer employs installed audio recordings using her own voice, images and found objects. Visceral, violent, sensual, humorous and melodramatic, Palmer’s narratives collide fiction, history and the everyday to construct unsettling environments that examine bodily presence, absence, exploitation, memorial and death. Her dematerialised worlds blur fact and fiction, conjuring associations in the minds of her readers, listeners and viewers that take on an almost material form. For her exhibition with Void, Palmer will exhibit ‘Reality Flickers’, ‘The Fabricator’s Tale’ (Blood-Bespattered Table) and ‘Now Landscape’ a new work produced specifically for Void. 

Katrina’s recent work includes ‘End Matter’ (2015) a major commission awarded as part of the 2013 Artangel Open and ‘Necropolitan Line’ (2015) commissioned by and exhibited with The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. Other exhibitions include ‘Art Now: The Weight of Data’, Tate Britain, London (2015); ‘MirrorCity’, Hayward Gallery, London (2014); ‘Dr Sinclair’s Drawer’, Flat Time House, London (2014); ‘Reality Flickers’, MOT International, London (solo: 2014), 21st Century, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2013); ‘From Morn ‘Til Midnight’, Supportico Lopez, Berlin (2013); ‘The Weight of Living’, MOT International, London (2012); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (solo: 2011). Katrina’s published books include The Dark Object (Book Works, 2010), The Fabricator’s Tale (Book Works, 2014) and End Matter (Book Works, 2015). She has contributed to publications including The Object: Documents of Contemporary Art series, Whitechapel Gallery/MIT (2014) and Modern British Sculpture, Royal Academy of Art, London (2011).

Katrina studied philosophy and English literature at University of Sussex and worked in the publishing industry for a decade. She studied sculpture at Central St Martins (2004) and went on to complete an MA at the Royal College of Art followed by a PhD (2004 – 2012). Katrina is currently a tutor at The Ruskin School of Art. She was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2014.

Void would like to thank The Arts Council of England for the loan of ‘Reality Flickers’ and to MOT International for their support.