HIGH RISE HOME WORKS | Kate Mellor

22 Jan - 23 Feb 2010. Gallery II

Preview 5 - 7pm, Thurs 21 Jan 2010

Artists talk 3 - 4pm, Tues 26 Jan 2010

This body of work is the result of a fellowship Kate Mellor was awarded by the International Photography Research Network, which was funded by the Arts Council England in partnership with the University of Sunderland. Under the overall title WORK, the series of fellowships interacts with the social and economic structures of a recently expanded European Union and looks at the idea of work within this context and an increasingly globalised world market place.

Mellor's research work in Poprad, Slovakia; photographs taken of the modernist domestic architecture and digital drawings derived from contemporary and historic domestic textiles - looks at different ways of constructing place through a consideration of landscape, environment, history and locality.

The images of the exteriors of the buildings contrast with the photographs of the interiors of the apartments. The exteriors represent a creation of place arising out of an ideological, social and economic overview whereas the images of people engaged in some domestic chore in their apartments shows the making of place on a more personal, grass roots level, a more organic way of making place that comes out of people's immediate experience and history. The drawn patterns contain iconic landscape features and become another way of describing place. These patterns had, historically the function of identification - that originally each person would have their own pattern so that they could readily be identified if anything befell them when they were out in the forests.

Mellor brings these three strands (exterior, interior and pattern) together, to create artworks that reference domestic wall hangings, and which comment and reflect upon society, place and locality. Mellor intends the work to associate with marching banners used traditionally to show a community, religious or workers' union allegiance.

With kind support from Domfoto, Slovakia and Arts Council England