Anaïs Castro
No. 109 – winter 2015

Katie Paterson: Ideas That Are Out There


Ingleby Gallery
Edinburgh
June 27—
October 4, 2014


 

These last couple of months have been quite busy for the Glasgow-born, Berlin-based artist Katie Paterson. Her first major solo exhibition in Britain took place at Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh from June until October of 2014 with a satellite presentation at Jupiter Artland. Paterson’s most recent project, The Future Library, is set in a forest growing in Norway. The artist planted trees that will be used in a hundred years to supply the paper necessary to print a special anthology of stories. In the meantime, one author per year will be invited to contribute a story that will be held unpublished until 2114. The first contributor is none other than Margaret Atwood.

Known for her use of historical, geological matter, Paterson’s work never fails to impress. She repurposes unusual materials into startlingly poetic works. Upon encountering Paterson’s work, however, one rarely knows what one is looking at, for her work generally does not reveal its meaning on first glance. In fact, Katie Paterson does not make art objects in the formalist sense, but, as the title of her show at Ingleby suggests, she creates Ideas.

In the centre of Ingleby Gallery’s large room, six iron meteorites were placed in a semicircle on the floor and organised by size. Paterson has cast these objects, as old as the planet, and then melted them before casting them back into the original shape in which she


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