hello fellow heat exchangers,
my name is Cath and I recently completed an MA at UWE where I met Elizabeth Turrell. Her enthusiasm for enamel led me to experiment on steel as a drawing substrate and consequently I became fascinated in applying enamel to found objects.
I am currently researching coal-industries within Wales, exploring a means of translating and recoding history to relate a duality between terrible working conditions in a coal-pit with the solidarity of social communities. I am motivated by a sense of mortality positioned in the moment, the power of ordinary objects to convey a sense of humanity, and notions of morality within shifting, ideological perspectives.
In making cast-iron replicas of utilitarian mining-artefacts I hope to simultaneously create an illusion of authenticity with sculptural solidity – like a paperweight, to hold firm or make resilient a snap-shot of history. Through a remnant object I want to capture the implication of what was there seen through what remains. The heavy material acts as a metaphor for weight of subject matter, giving the impression of permanence to a forgotten industry.
Through my experimentation with enamel I have had some partial success using decals to apply documentary photographs to the 3d cast objects. But I have also discovered infinite technical problems resulting from the porous nature of iron and defects in the material I have access to: my inability to solve these problems has resulted in an interest to take advantage of them: I hope to use this Heat Exchange opportunity to develop a more exploratory approach to enamel on iron, to embrace the learning possibilities of a dialogue exchange.
I am so excited to participate and very nervous about my limited time. This opportunity is particularly significant to me because it holds my focus on enamel processes and demonstrates my need to create a new studio environment. I look forward to hearing how everyone’s response to Heat Exchange unfolds…
Catherine Fairgrieve
Catherine works across discipline boundaries, excited by the potential of combining traditional processes with new technologies. She is an artist and educator, and lives in Wales.