'Untitled (Compactor)' Painting

Katie Watson is based in North East of England and recently graduated from Newcastle University with a First-Class Honours in BA Fine Art. Her current practise examines the universal language of visual information, and how this data is interpreted and processed. Watson’s practice pursues a disjointed discourse, translating methods of “do it yourself” assembly into painting, she visually describes movements and processes which are ubiquitous and universally understood. Her work originates from an interest in entirely visual methods of communication, whereby linguistics are replaced with directional motifs. This vocabulary of forms includes arrows, dotted lines and speech bubbles. Through the development of her own language of visual information, the constructed dialogues consist of fragments of pure, descriptive information, interrupted by areas of ambiguous, abstract shape. The paintings are essentially exercises in ‘gap filling’, as Watson provides only fragments of information. These elements take the form of visual descriptions of single specific properties, such as an outline, colour, or texture. This fragmented schematisation creates an interrupted logic in her work. Constructed on bare birch plywood, Watson’s paintings celebrate the inherent qualities of this traditional construction material upon which she explores diagrammatic form and mechanical language. Her process involves the accumulation of diagrammatic information found in instructional flat-pack furniture booklets, vehicular maintenance manuals, and model construction kits. Watson then reinterprets fragments of this information through painting, multi-dimensional assemblages and dysfunctional objects. As well as re-appropriating found diagrammatic imagery, Watson designs and produces her own every-day, functional objects and from this develops her own instruction manuals. The constructed object is never exhibited, giving the paintings a vague objecthood as they negotiate between image and object. This play of formal values creates equivalencies between instruction and abstract form.