Flying Too Close to the Sun – Kathryn Graham
QSS is delighted to host Flying Too Close to the Sun in Gallery 2,a solo show by Kathryn Graham.
Opening event: Thursday 7th September from 6pm. No booking required, please see the ‘visitor information’ section of our website for further details on visiting the gallery https://www.queenstreetstudios.net/visitor-information/
Exhibition Dates: 7th – 28th September 2023
General opening hours: Monday – Thursday, 10am-5pm.
Flying Too Close to The Sun.
Myth, like art, is mercurial and prevalent. It resonates across time, transforming into new forms, reinventing itself – all the while, retaining a recognisable bone structure. It has the capacity to compress past and present and abounds with splits and contradictions. It lulls and lures us into a sense of complicity with its own fiction. Human folly and desire refracted into fable – a boy flying on handmade wings.
‘Flying Too Close to the Sun’ is a series of works that explore print as means to reinvent itself and metamorphose material. Folklore, myth and tales of deities inform works from Anansi to Kamdhenu. Reflecting on childhood toys as emblematic mediators of memory. Symbols that impart narrative, reflecting on the journey from childhood innocence to adult awareness, revisiting and reconstructing fragmented memories, informed by a new vision of the world.
Print and sculptural works thread together past and present, mediating between both metaphorical and representational. There is a permanence of object and changing subject, certain affinities can be traced among objects gathered together. While also serving as vessels to explore a collective memory. Informed by personal experience of object and the stories which weave into the fabric of our everyday existence.
The work is composed of recognisable images and symbols which highlight mythology’s capacity to infiltrate, inform and merge with everyday life. As past and present collide, dreams merge with reality, distorted visions emerge from memory, the familiar and the forgotten. Introducing new versions and ever-changing depictions.
The cycle of repeat, renew and reinvent in the works, plays within the principles of printmaking and perceptions of replica and multiple. The object of mass reproduction is isolated to break the repetitive mould. Narrative strands are constructed and deconstructed as each piece invites a viewer to remember and re-imagine. There is a breaking of boundaries between reality and fantasy, print and paper, denoting the undeniable truth that even in adulthood, we remain forever entwined with the stories that shape us.
“Flying Too Close to the Sun” invites us to open Pandora’s box, revealing the story within the ordinary. Through depictions, that both wade and warn us of adulthood afflictions.
About the Artist
Kathryn Graham (b. 1995, Northern Ireland) is a Belfast based visual artist and Fine Art Print lecturer at Belfast School of Art. Graham graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Print in 2019 having graduated from the Belfast School of Art with a First-Class Honours Fine Art degree in 2017. She achieved a Norman Ackroyd Printmaking Fellowship at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2021.
Graham has shown work internationally in India, China and the United States. Recent shows include Impact 12 Bristol, Arcade Belfast, SPACE London, Hang Tough Contemporary Dublin, RE Bankside Gallery London, Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair London, Royal Ulster Academy Belfast, Southwark Park Galleries London, CCA Derry, Cream Athens and Cole Projects London. Graham was awarded a Space Artist Award in (2021) including a London based artist residency, Arts Council India residency award (2020), Gwen May printmaking award (shortlisted) and RUA Outstanding Students Award (2017. Graham was recipient of Arts council and A-N artists funding and has work held in collections of Victoria and Albert Museum, The Royal College of Art and The University of Ulster.
Website – Kathryngraham.org . Instagram – @kathryn_graham_
