KATE WILLIAMS
PRACTICE
I work primarily with quilted textiles: large-scale wall-hung pieces in which imaginary architectural forms cast high-key shadows in vivid, empty landscapes, as if Di Chirico had been transplanted to 1980s Miami.
I’m interested in artifice and illusion, and in the playfulness of both postmodern architecture and the trompe l’oeil vistas of the 18th and 19th century. There’s an eerie yet pleasurable sense of estrangement in those worlds which intrigues me. I hope that, in the apparent paradox of representing architectural space in fabric, there’s also something playful and dreamlike, and mildly unsettling.
I try to evoke a sense of ambiguity through the content of the work, and also through technique. The long quilting-lines oscillate between planes - one minute delineating the bricks and tiles which form the structures, creating depth and perspective; the next, retreating into the familiar, padded surface qualities of 'a quilt'.
I use a piecing rather than appliqué; each element is drawn and cut from linen union, then attached to its neighbour. It's then layered with wool and cotton and machine-quilted - an industrialised process which seems more fitting to the content of my pieces than handwork.
A new series, Soft, pushes the three-dimensional qualities of quilts further towards sculpture. As with my previous work, I hope the viewer is left mildly unsettled - in 'Soft Cell', for example, seductive pillows of fabric draw us in, while a half-glimpsed shadow invites the viewer to consider the cost of comfort.
Most recently, my work featured in 'Quilts: A Material Culture' at the Batsford Gallery in Hackney as part of London Craft Week 2023.
