Kate Tucker

Kate Tucker’s paintings shift and fracture then recombine elements in a manner that subverts expected order. Materials are manipulated so as to maintain a rawness and familiarity whilst taking on foreign characteristics. Her recent painting process has shifted towards building slab-like substrates through repetitive layering of various materials. This process emerged as a reaction to the restrictions of painting traditionally onto pre-stretched linens. Rather than working within a defined area and surface, each layer became an opportunity to change the form as well as the content of the work. The result is a series of ‘tablets’ – irregularly shaped paintings that represent an accumulation of numerous material based experiments, rather than the realisation of a pre-conceived idea. The freedom afforded by this has impacted on the way Tucker uses paint to form compositions and make marks. As paint is used to stain calico, which is then wrapped and plaited around the substrate, any painting that is done with a brush must co-habit with a different iteration of itself. Similarly, fabrics that are digitally printed with images of other works are used, sometimes images of earlier versions of the actual painting they become part of.

Kate Tucker is a Melbourne/Naarm-based artist who graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2009. Her recent projects include solo exhibitions at Daine Singer, Cathedral Cabinet, Bus Projects, and group exhibitions at London Art Fair, NADA New York, Bendigo Art Gallery, Caves, Swan Hill Regional Gallery, Ararat Gallery TAMA, McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery, La Trobe Art Institute, Penrith Regional Gallery.  In 2024 Perimeter Editions published A community of parts, a monograph on Tucker’s evolution of practice over the last decade.