The way women are displayed in glossy magazines, advertisement or even porn images is rather stereotypical and often an exaggeration of one particular feminine aspect. I guess we all know that it’s not a realistic view on the female population, it’s a functional image of a woman, to sell your product, or to entertain your audience. Artist Kate Marshall uses these “one dimensional” images as an inspiration for her drawings, she recreates them and presents them in a different context, for a different audience.
The drawings in the gallery are the ones inspired by dated porn or soft-core imaginary. But besides these sexual themed drawings she also uses other subjects, like fairy tales and china figurines. These artworks have no erotic theme, but they are born out of the same passion, recycling or revitalizing fixed our outdated icons.
There’s also a more tactile side to her work, that exists along her more rational flirtage with kitsch. It’s the spontaneous creation process. Displaying the pure joy to draw, to paint and let the material find it’s own, nearly autonomous destiny. It gives her already multi-layered work even more depth, although more sensitive and harder to capture in a few words.
