Katie Schwab
Katie Schwab
Katie Schwab is the first emerging artist invited by the new Porthmeor Artist Residency Programme and supported during her time in Studio 9 by the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust.
Katie’s practice interweaves personal, social, and craft-based histories, often drawing from traditions of living, making and working collectively. Her artworks take the form of installations of embroidered, woven and printed textiles, ceramic tableware, furniture and videos, drawing on the bright colours, bold shapes and abstract forms of twentieth-century modern design.
My five months at Porthmeor Studios were spent weaving, sewing, dyeing and writing. In the studio I produced A Portable Mural, the 2017 Architecture Family Pack for the Serpentine Pavilion. The printed work was composed of a strip of indigo fabric and cyanotypes made from a woven tapestry, and was designed and produced in St Ives. I also worked with designer Sarah Johnson on a collection of indigo dyed mats for the Pavilion, which we dyed at our home, Chy an Creet, and stitched at Porthmeor Studios.
I spent the summer experimenting with designs for patchwork fabrics, which have developed into a new curtain for mima’s atrium in Middlesbrough. Drawing on these patchwork techniques, I also composed a collaged text for a reading and walk in London with Up Projects in June. Finally I have been researching local textiles practices in Cornwall and next year will be undertaking a Design Residency at Plymouth College of Art where I hope to produce a new body of fabric works responding to the patterns and dye samples of the historic St Ives Cryséde silk works.
Katie completed her MFA at The Glasgow School of Art in 2015 and recent exhibitions include Jerwood Solo Presentations, Jerwood Space, London (2016), Making the Bed, Laying the Table, Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Glasgow (2016) and Together in a Room, Collective, Edinburgh (2016). She has run workshops and projects at galleries including Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Serpentine Galleries, Arnolfini, The Fruitmarket Gallery, The Common Guild and Camden Arts Centre.