Making Space
Kate Shields | Future Stones
During their Making Space residency, Kate's aim is to create more opportunities for community interaction within their creative process. This focus stems from a sense of loss they have experienced following the Covid lockdowns, rising living costs, community dispersal, and isolation caused by their disabilities. Kate seeks to explore how their research into ancient stone circles, local folklore, and archaeology can inform the community-building and storytelling aspects of their practice. They pose the following questions:
- What does a post-Covid community look like?
- How can inviting others into the process transform a creative practice?
- How might using archaeological methods in a creative way reveal how our communities will be remembered (or forgotten)?
On Monday, 27 January, Kate invites participants to bring stones with stories behind them to Fabrica's main space. These stones will become part of a temporary ‘pop-up’ stone circle. Throughout the week, each story and stone will be catalogued, documented, and 3D-scanned, using methods inspired by their interest in archaeology. Through this process, Kate hopes to unearth shared narratives, process her "finds," and present them using the visual symbol of connection, ritual, and sacred space embodied by the stone circle. Additionally, they will create 3D models of each stone, enabling the collectively created stone circle to exist digitally within the online realm, preserving it for the future.
This residency represents a step toward embedding community engagement into Kate's creative practice long-term. It also allows them to explore making more space for connection, collective world-building, and synchronicity within their artistic process.
On Friday, 31 January, there will be an Artist Talk + Q&A, where the completed stone circle will be on display. Participants will also have the opportunity to collect their stones, though arrangements can be made to return them at another time if needed. The event is open to everyone, and all are welcome to attend.
About The Artist
Kate Shields’ practice is deeply informed by diverse lived experiences, which translate into tactile material choices and immersive world-building. Rooted in queer aesthetics and culture, her work seeks to escape normative identities and express lived experiences of embodiment through digital-physical imaging and mixed media worlds. These works explore the desire to survive, process, and move forward.
Since COVID-19, this desire has fluctuated between non-existent and overwhelming, leading her practice to increasingly reflect her experiences as a disabled, queer person. Her current focus is on making her work more sustainable, collaborative, and healing during divisive and challenging times—for both herself and her audiences.
Since 2020, Kate has undertaken three research residencies, including one at the University of Sussex, where she developed GUTS (The Enchanted Forest), a digital installation informed by her lived experience of the chronic health condition Ulcerative Colitis. The work was shown at Lighthouse in 2022. In 2023, funding from Arts Council England enabled her to learn new digital skills, receive mentorship, and dedicate time in the studio to developing new ideas.
