Katie Schwab. Making the Bed, Laying the Table

About

The exhibition takes its title from a new collection of works made by Florence Dwyer, Katie Schwab and Simon Worthington addressing ideas of collective making and communal living. The exhibition also contains a video work by Katie Schwab and Ed Emery, a text by Rosanna McLaughlin and a screening event in July organised by Jamie George.

Schwab is interested in the politics of constructing and inhabiting living space: how the building, designing, furnishing and upkeep of rooms can reveal the values, economies and politics of the people that live there. She is particularly interested in communal living situations, and how an individual voice might be found within the context of a shared living space.

Her work is multi-disciplinary and combines various forms of craft and fine art including video, text, tapestry, embroidery, ceramics and functional furniture embracing both contemporary technological making processes, and traditional craft techniques. Her works are often choreographed together in installations in a ‘communal’ exhibition space. Her installations combine objects that embrace both contemporary technological innovation and traditional craft processes (e.g. tapestry- weaving, wood turning).

The work she makes stems from an interest in 19th, 20th and 21st century domestic design and social living space. She is particularly interested in the furniture, architecture and home-ware of communities who believed in the importance, whether social, religious or political, of design and craft in everyday life. Recent work has explored the objects and living spaces of 1960s leftists, the Bauhaus, the Shakers and present day communes.