While working on a fellowship with the International Photography Research Network Kate visited Poprad in Slovakia.
Her research work considered landscape, environment, history and locality looking at different ways of constructing place. This is reflected by photographs taken of the modernist domestic architecture in Poprad and digital drawings derived from contemporary and historic domestic textiles.
The images of the exteriors of the buildings contrast with the photographs of the interiors of the apartments. The exteriors represent a creation of place arising out of an ideological, social and economic overview whereas the images of people engaged in some domestic chore in their apartments shows the making of place on a more personal, grass roots level, a more organic way of making place that comes out of people's immediate experience and history. The drawn patterns contain iconic landscape features and become another way of describing place. These patterns had, historically, the function of identification - that originally each person would have their own pattern so that they could readily be identified if anything befell them when they were out in the forests.
Kate brought these three strands together to create large artworks that reference domestic textiles and wall hangings that comment upon society, place and locality. The works are intended to associate with marching banners used traditionally to show a community, religious or worker's union allegiance.
Read Robert Galeta writing about High Rise Homeworks here