AWARD SCOOPED BY KATIE
WEXFORD County Council, Wexford Arts Centre and the Arts Council have announced artist Katie Watchorn as the recipient of the 10th annual Emerging Visual Artist Award.
The aim of the award is to recognise and support the development of promising visual artists in Ireland. The winner receives €5,000 to assist in the production of new work for a solo exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre.
As the recipient of the award, Watchorn will create a new body of work during the coming year, to be exhibited in January 2018.
The artist works with a wide range of agrarian materials such as animal fibre blankets,fatty products and milk to create tactile pieces illuminating the nuances and materiality of Irish rural farming.
Drawing on her own experiences and upbringing in this community, Watchorn is interested in the care and feeling of protection which envelops a farm’s livestock and the constant attempts to prevent sickness within the herd. Her ongoing research involves visiting and recording farming environments in County Carlow, and recording her father’s experience on animal husbandry and contemporary Irish farming which stretches back to the early 1970s. For her exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre, she will combine organic substances with rough agricultural materials like cast iron, rubber and galvanise to create work concerned with the placement of these rural materials within the formal setting of a public gallery. Watchorn received a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from the National College of Art and Design in 2014. She has exhibited in Ireland and the Netherlands.