About

Kate Studley (born 1995, Chester, UK) completed her BA in Fine Arts at Loughborough University, UK and later at the University of Zaragoza, Spain in 2017. In 2019 she relocated to Aachen, Germany, interested by the cross border dialogue between the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium and how this can be communicated through natural and local materials. Having been raised on the English / welsh border, location continues to contribute to her artistic research. Her work takes focus mainly on how location and material can distort or enhance the perception of time, visualised through sculptural and installation works that are often site specific. Studley’s work is largely project and research based, and is mostly conducted and exhibited throughout Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium.

Through artistic research I explore the capabilities of natural materials to visualise themes of belonging within the cycles of time, place, and the natural world, where growth and decay are not opposites but intertwined states of existence. Through site-specific installations and mixed-media sculptures, I engage with space using often locally sourced materials, such as pine resin, wood, plant oils, water, sugars, clays, moulds and hemp, as both as material and as artistic concept. By embracing the ephemeral nature of these materials, I invite the viewer to witness the delicate quality of transformation where nothing is static and everything is processual. The organic forms used within my practice embody this notion, drawing attention to the subtle, yet profound traces that remain after decay, taken as reminders of what was, and what is becoming.

Raised amidst the agricultural landscapes and rural communities of Northwest England and Wales, my practice is guided heavily by the individual and collective lived experience of the relativity of temporal perception. My practice continues to be aided by theoretical research into the phenomenology, understanding time not as an external chronology unfolding outside of us but a phenomenal field that arises through our embodied, pre-reflective engagement with the world. This challenges the idea of time as a linear succession of significant present points. Instead that our experience of time is structured by memory, anticipation and the current moment that is constantly shaped by both. This understanding of time as not only observation but as something we live from within ourselves is visualised through experimentation with materiality. Through my works, the viewer is invited not just to observe, but to experience the act of change itself, the passage of time as movement. The sculptural works intend not to present permanence, but rather the narrative of transformation that exists around us. Through these transient interventions, I place humanity within the larger context of the natural world, encouraging reflection on our fleeting presence and the imprints we leave behind.

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