Kate Boucher studied at Chelsea School of Art in the early 1990s, followed by a PGCE in Secondary Art and Design at BCU. On being selected as the Edward James Scholar and awarded a prestigious QEST Scholarship in 2015, Kate went on to achieve Distinction in her Master of Fine Art at West Dean College where she won the Valerie Power Prize for Visual Arts. In 2017 she had the rare honour of being shortlisted for a second time by QEST, has been accepted onto the practice-based PhD programme at UCA Schools Farnham and is our current gallery artist-in-residence.
Kate Boucher’s practice crosses between 2D and 3D, using representations of landscape to explore notions of residence, dislocation and precariousness and their relationship with grief and emotional repair. There is an intention that the work should elicit both a sense of disquiet but also comfort, provoking vacillation between dissonant responses, without requiring a resolution.
To this end her drawings employ insubstantial structures, unnaturally tilted horizons, hints of a double exposure and foregrounds that appear to shift and slip; the paper bearing creases, folds and scars. They explore the notion that immersion in a darkened landscape may allow pent-up emotions to be released and experienced under a shield of twilight.
In attempting to resolve these concerns in sculptural form, consideration has been given to the use of mass, gestures of holding and comforting, folding and pinning, hints of former usefulness and signs of something once seemingly invulnerable, now damaged and worn. The felt references the idea of comfort blankets, folded and put nearby in case of need.