“Confines is a series of site-sensitive installations by Kath Fries, the current artist-in-residence at The Lock-Up, Newcastle. In these works Fries has used tactile everyday materials to explore and describe the perimeters and penetrations of each space, consciously leaving room for the viewer’s own personal associations, interpretations and narratives to be developed. Whispers of ghost stories permeate these spaces, manifesting in Fries’ installations as a sense of tension, balancing on an edge between the immediate present and unfurling possibilities of the unseen.”
“My installation practice begins with the premise of responding to the location of each work in a site-sensitive manner. But, in a building as heavily laden with a sense of historical presence as The Lock-Up, it has been all the more challenging to respond to the dynamics of these spaces and enhance their sensibilities without sidetracking or detracting from what they are. Working on an intuitive level and focusing on my gut reaction to being in each of the spaces (forcing myself to remain there for hours at a time whilst making the works), I explored the physical boundaries of the cells particularly the permeation points. Not just the doors for human access, but more particularly how light, air and sound came into, out-of and move around each of the spaces. Tactile everyday materials are used inConfines to track and enhance these potential paths of movement. During the process of developing these works the notion of art as escapism became particularly apparent and the possibility of escaping in any form was very appealing.” (Kath Fries, April 2011).
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