Kate Liston is one of the ENTWINED Associated Artists. She will be spending time at Highgreen and making work for the final exhibition.

STATEMENT

Kate Liston makes works in response to existing sites and situations, using the limitations of these locations and contexts to explore forms of world-making. She employs echo and repetition in writing and moving-image to reveal how materials are handled and meanings processed. Her sculptures use a schematic visual language and spatial illusion to present as speculative forms. Projects often encompass sculpture, moving image, sound and writing into installations that act as hosting spaces for audiences to dwell in, which are sometimes activated by live events.

IDEAS FOR ENTWINED: RURAL. LAND. LIVES. ART.

In recent projects I have become interested in the shared agencies that exist between human and nonhuman species, and the affective resonances of the places they exist with and within. I was drawn to the location of the VARC – within a landscape marked starkly by human management of the natural environment. Equally, I was excited by the opportunity to generate a networked understanding of this place through dialogue with the other ENTWINED artists, community groups and bodies of local expertise.

Through my role as Associate Artist I am aiming to produce writing and 8mm film responding to the various futures that have been mapped onto this place. This includes ecological interventions and forms of land stewardship but also involves reflecting on the substantial history of VARC as an organisation hosting artists here.

To ground some of these concerns, I have been researching ticks. I have been thinking about their roles as both host and parasite, as vectors connecting up ecological communities, and their abilities to act as barometers for the health of an ecosystem. I am grateful to Forestry Commission workers who have generously shared knowledge and stories of tick encounters in the field.

BIOGRAPHY 

Kate Liston is an artist based in Newcastle working with moving image, installation, writing and performance. She has a practice-led PhD from Northumbria University. Recent exhibitions include: Oh-Link Zone, Black Tower Projects, London (2018); Feel After the New See at Hatton Gallery (2018); The Scientific Method at The Tetley Gallery, Leeds (2016); Feminism and the Body in Performance at MART Gallery, Dublin (2015); The Decorator and the Thief at NGCA, Sunderland (2015); They Used to Call it the Moon at BALTIC, Gateshead (2014). Oh-Link Zone is due to be released as a vinyl album in 2021, presenting 7 artist responses to her PhD thesis. She is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Northumbria University.

www.kateliston.com