Kindred, solo installation, 2022. Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh
Kim L. Pace is a maker of charged objects, an animator of mirages. Ceramics are ancient and versatile, close to the earth and crafted by hand, vessels and entities that are capable of summoning alternative material realities. Pace coaxes this primeval medium through the narratives of contemporary art. Kindred presents an archaeological folk tale that beckons the surrealist marvellous, toys with trompe l’oeil, and tickles a history of grotesque caricature. Pace is fascinated with the writings of Angela Carter and the visual imagery of Leonora Carrington – think of the carnival masks and waxy make-up in Carter’s Wise Children (1991) or the curious clusters of colourful characters that inhabit a Carrington picture such as A Sanctuary for Furies (1974).
extract from essay by Catriona McAra, click here to read the whole essay
Constellation, 2022. 135 x 90 x 5 cm. 36 glazed ceramic elements. Constellation explores kinship, through an alternative ‘family tree’. Reminiscent of emojis, the faces in this work appear animated with a multitude of emotions, reinforced through subtle variations in colour, surface and form.
Boulder Girls, 2021. Glazed ceramic, nine elements. dimensions overall 135 x 95 x 30 cm. Included in Kindred, solo exhibition at Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, 2022. This ‘family’ of nine finely-nuanced ceramic heads developed out of genealogical research, particularly matrilineal, during the first Covid lockdown. The heads feature likenesses and are clearly affiliated, although are not portraits. Rather, they refer to a generic sense of female ancestry, kinship and the transmission of physical, psychological and life-pattern traits down the generations. Evocative of stones and shown in a circle, Boulder Girls blend human and non-human qualities.