Kat Cutler-MacKenzie

Fine Art - MA (Hons)

School of Art

kat.cut.mac@gmail.com

https://katcutlermackenzie.cargo.site/

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An Archaeology of The Home, performance to camera, colour photograph, 2020

Artist Statement

Kat Cutler-MacKenzie is an artist and art-historian who works at the intersection of both disciplines to explore the ways in which gender and love have been constructed through visual and material culture, and the mythology surrounding the female body. Central to Kat's practice is her collaboration with sculptor and photographer Ben Caro. Her work is informed by French Feminist Theory and, as such, has a psychoanalytic edge that seeks to explore hidden conversations and undercurrents, as well as to trace inter-generational conversations that allow us to explore how history, the past, has shaped how we understand such issues as gender and cultural memory today. She predominantly works in collage, installation, and photography to do so, using the space between images and objects to surface present but often unspoken narratives.

A downloadable pdf of her portfolio can be found at: https://katcutlermackenzie.cargo.site/About

Awards

RSA New Contemporaries Baldwin Brown Travelling Scholarship, 2020 Shortlisted for The Astaire Prize, 2020

Skills & Experience

Selected for TSDAP's New Graduates Catalogue: 2021 Edition
Selected to present at The Association for Art History: Emerging Perspectives conference with Ben Caro, Edinburgh, 2020
Presented at The 8th Annual Euroacademia Conference, Venice, 2020
Selected to exhibit in Trading Zone 2018 at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh
Studio holder at Rhubaba Gallery and Studios

The Cut, paper on paper collage series, 2019-present

The Cut is an ongoing series of collages exploring the way in which the ideological female body has been constructed through repeated performance, represented in this series by Hollywood cinema. In these collages 'the cut', the splice, is used to surface alternate gender narratives from within these heavily codified images.

a black and white diamond shaped collage. two women embrace at the cheek, a single cut fusing them.

a black and white collage of cyd charisse, young woman and older, fused into an embrace by one diagonal cut

black and white collage of a 1920s couple, a feather boa fuses into a fox stole, leaving a doting man on the shoulder of a distant woman

Left: Ju tu iel, paper on paper collage, 25.5cm x 36cm, 2020, Top Right: Not myself today, paper on paper collage, 10cm x 6cm (unmounted), 2020, Bottom Right: Feather Boa Fur Stole, paper on paper collage, 13.7 x 10.6 cm (unmounted), 2021

Two Step, paper on paper collage, 33cm x 42cm (framed), 2019

a collage of two dancers, their bodies morphed into one, framed in metal silver

An Archaeology of The Home, performance to camera, 35mm slide series, dimensions variable, 2020

An Archaeology of The Home began as a performance installation but was adapted into a performance to camera due to covid related audience restrictions. In the performance two archaeologists use images depicting female stereotypes — from c.1500 to today — to reconstruct the identity of an unknown woman uncovered in a domestic archaeological site. In the performance the duo use the ‘Betty Almanac’, an unfolding aide-memoire traditionally used by medieval physicians, to speculate as to the identity of the housewife by mapping objects found within her environment onto the diagram. Their findings are spectacular and surreal, revealing the identity of a woman whose body has undergone a sea-change and returned to stone.

An Archaeology of The Home, 35mm colour slide series, 2020

O.o.o.h!, 35mm slide projection, 81 colour slides, dimensions variable, 2021

O.o.o.h! is a semi-pedagogic, semi-absurd investigation into the menstrual cycle. It takes as its starting point the egg to explore the analogue relationship between bird anatomy, women's bodies, and cosmic bodies such as the moon. Throughout the slideshow the artists also morph their own bodies into one, weaving male, female and bird anatomy together through the use of macro-lenses, performative gestures, and playful inter-titles.

Slide projection of an egg punched out of 35mm kodachrome slide film.

a woman holds open an orange egg bag filled with quails eggs

oology is the study and collection of eggs.

object oriented ontology is a branch of philosophy that argues against the privileging of human existence over object existence.

0 < this is an egg.

Slide projection of silver tights against blue velvet backdrop with a string of quails eggs attached to the crotch.

Obsession, dual-channel slide projection and the scent of Obsession by Calvin Klein, 3.5m x 3.5m x 2.2m, 2021

Obsession is a 35mm slide projection inspired and accompanied by the perfume Obsession by Calvin Klein. The scent is known for its sensuous, 'animal' qualities, and was used by scientists at the Maya Biosphere Reserve to attract jaguars towards hidden cameras during their research.

a projection of a pigs heart punctured by a bronze cluster of arrows, projected in a black box with a shiny lime silk carpet

Projection of a punctured pigs heart, partially overlayed by a heart moving between two hands, both projected

a pigs heart punctured by a cluster of bronze arrowheads, 35mm colour slide

A still from Suspiria, a woman throws her head backwards, the screen drenched in kitsch red blood

Blood Stars, paper on paper collage series, 2021

Blood Stars is a growing body of collages exploring the tension between patriotism, violence, and bloodshed in images of modern and contemporary conflict. In this collage series on war, ‘the cut’ is used to create time ruptures that are suggestive of flashbacks, or the emergence of repressed memories.

CW: the following works include images of death and blood.

a collage of an Indian soldier receiving a medal. The image is spliced with a star, through which runs blood.

a collage with a star shaped cut in the centre. three women look at news of world war 2 in fear within a wider image of the vietnam war

Collage of a man shot dead in Sarajevo, with a soldier in tears emerging from stars cut out of as well as superimposed onto the shocking press photograph

two women are obscured by drips of red fabric and plastic roses, as if blood, collage

tanks move from right to left of a desert expanse, four men carrying their comrade in a coffin emerge from a jagged star cut at the centre of the image

Top Left: Blood Star, 21.7cm x 14.9cm (unmounted), Middle Left: War Again, 21.8cm x 14.5cm (unmounted), Bottom Left: Sarajevo, 21.6cm x 14cm (unmounted), Top Right: Plastic Roses for Stalin, 30.5cm x 40.6cm (mounted on 300gsm smooth paper), Bottom Right: Good Men, 21.6cm x 14cm (unmounted)

O.o.o.logy, photographic triptych, C-type prints, each 59cm x 84cm, 2021

O.o.o.logy is a triptych of photographs that documents performative interactions with two quails eggs. The photographs were used by the artists to investigate how to communicate speculative encounters, display/presentation, and analogous methods of thinking with objects.

a woman holds two quails eggs to her eyes and look out of the frame, as if to space

a woman in a black skirt holds two quails eggs to her abdomen, as if ovaries

photograph of woman holding eggs as ovaries installed onto mdf structure attached to bench

O.o.o.logy installed in the exhibition 'ohm', Former Project Space, Brussels. Photo courtesy Laura De Jaeger.

a hand reading support, this, that, here, there, with arrows, written on each finger and the thumb