Catherine McCaw-Aldworth

After finishing my essay on gender performativity, I was really inspired with what kind of context I want to include in my work. I have been trying for a long time to move away from the fluid painting and classical sculpture interests, but I couldn’t move anywhere as I had no idea where I wanted to go and so I was just floating around for the last few weeks working on more written work than physical pieces.  After finishing the essay, I started to look more into horror and sci-fi movies. I became really inspired by the visual settings of horror movies, Mostly the houses and the role they play in the settings of the movies. Horror has always been something consistent in my life, the thrill of the movie and the adrenaline rush it gives. The spooky and gloomy aesthetic takes me away into a different world that personifies these demons that cannot be seen in day to day life. Psycho is perhaps one of the best-known horror/thriller movies ever made, it has become a staple in th...

The first essay of the year is upon us and I am actually really excited to be writing it, probably because the topic/text I have chosen is super interesting and relative to me (I think). Out of the many texts I chose ‘Carrie and the boys’ which talks about gender in horror cinema, especially in the 1970s classic ‘Carrie’. Without exposing the entire essay, I have written thus far, I will share with you the introduction which sets up the essay and explains in more detail what and who I’m looking into. “This essay will be an exploration of gender performativity within horror cinema. To better understand this theme, we will look past modern horror cinema and explore 1930s horror when gender performativity took deeper root with the introduction of sound into movies. We will also explore various themes within gender performance, such as; the role of the audience, the final girl, cinematic gaze, sexuality between genders and most importantly the female scream. We will be looking into...

High and Dry Poster  As part of my uni course we were tasked with curating an exhibition in groups around the idea of kitchen heterotopia. I of course had no idea what this meant but was keen to learn more about it. When we were first assigned to our groups we collectively decided to go away and think individually about what we wanted our exhibition to be and look like and then we had a group meeting to discuss some of the ideas we had and make a brainstorm and plan of action for the weeks ahead. I had various ideas about locations, I was thinking more about probability and being able to make the show happen and be successful in a short space of time that we were given. My ideas included, turning a caravan into a mobile kitchen exhibition and taking it on tour for a week, this became probable with the variable of needing to find someone able to drive it to different locations every day of the week. I also thought about using a church kitchen, almost like an art soup kitchen, ...

As a year group we have recently held a silent auction called stretched to raise money in order so that we could have a show in London. The auction went really well and we raised over £1700 which is insanely good! We were all given a small square canvas and got told to make some work for it, I made a small fluid painting with a classical Greek statue in the middle. A simple style and piece that linked to work I am currently doing. Looking at the other works that were submitted I think that I could have put more effort and thought into my piece but at the time I was not sure what to make and I have also never made work to be sold before and so I wasn’t sure what to expect from it. overall, I am happy with the work and very proud with everyone’s efforts to make this happen!

I have been working towards the first crit show of the academic year, at first, I found it quite difficult to think of a piece that was ambitious and that pushed me enough. After many talks with tutors and crit’s I thought about pushing the small-scale circular paintings and wax figurines and make them a lot bigger. I went into the wood workshop and made a large circular MDF board approximately five foot five, the same height as me. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one board big enough to cut out the shape and so I had to use three separate boards and use metal screw attachments to join them together. This meant that the finished board had two lines on it but I was able to cover the smaller line with paint so that it wasn’t too noticeable but the larger line was very visible, something I need to work on a solution for. I have only done small scale circular fluid paintings and so this size was a big leap for me, I tried to use the same method as I do with smaller pieces but it took about t...

I have had some time this week to play around in the studio and get some larger pieces of work done, trying to push myself with scale and the ambition of my work. A big problem with my work is struggling to let go and allow the work to just happen, I think too much about what others will think of the work. I got two larger canvases and filmed my painting process. The longest part about the paintings is the mixing of the paint with the chemicals and mediums that I use. Overall to mix them all it takes about 45 minutes. Then the painting on the canvas takes 10-15 minutes. I wanted to continue with this experimentation of merging painting and sculpture. I had a couple of body casts from last year sitting in my studio but they were starting to deteriorate and so I took them into the plater workshop to give them a quick go over and build them up to look a bit rougher. I then simply laid them on top of the painting to take some photos. I really like the outcome of these piece...

The Fine Art department in UCA is fortunate enough to have its own show space called the Offside Project Space. We are encouraged to show in this space as much as possible to test new ideas, build up portfolio, to get more confident in showing work and to get more feedback on work. I have been working more with the painting and sculpture merging, experimenting with colour contrast, scale and shape. For this show I gathered three of my fellow students and we decided that the popup show would be centred around the body and fragmentation. The themes that we look at it in our individual practices are somewhat similar with fragile theoretical links, this created a really great tension in the show and in a way it all flowed together to create a sweep of exciting work.

Our show Cut-and-Shut was a great success and I was lucky to receive lots of positive feedback from the show and also some critical feedback suggesting how I could go further with the piece. We were lucky enough to have Jo Bushnell, the director of Aspex Gallery Portsmouth come to have a private look of the show and give feedback of all the work by doing a walk through crit tutorial, it is linked below.

Since starting the second year of university I have tried to get more involved with the university lifestyle. I have started co-running the life drawing society, which I found has helped me a lot in my practice. drawing nude bodies from life weekly has helped a lot in my proportion control and shaping of the body when I have been working with sculpture and drawing in my sketchbook. If you would like to know more about the society you can follow the Instagram page @ucalifedrawingfarnham These are some images of modelling and my work I have produced in some of the sessions.

We had our first show of the year at Arts space Portsmouth. The show is Called Cut-and-Shut and had the amazing opportunity to go and be a part of the set-up team for the show. I am quite interested in curation and so I really enjoyed being able to go and help put up this show and get to know everyone’s work better. My Digital Collage was also chosen to be the artwork for the posters and flyers which is really exciting! The piece that I made for the show was a development from the previous work I have been making so far this year. I continued to develop the fluid painting and trying to evolve the technique to make the texture more gaseous, like that of a surface planet. I also used one of the wax pieces I had made and decided to incorporate this into the piece, merging 2D painting and 3D sculpture to create a multidisciplinary piece. I am quite happy with the piece and how I was able to set it up in the show, although I think that I could be more ambitious with my work ...

I have found researching quite difficult recently as I have been more focused on the practical making side of my course but some works that have really inspired me lately are the ones shown below. They don’t all necessarily link to my work directly but I take little snippets of inspiration from wherever I can. Min Jeong Seo- 'To Live On' 2005 "The stalks these flowers are already dried up but their blossoms are preserved and kept fresh by the medical infusion bags. The life-span of every living creature is  limited.The  infusion bags stand for the progress in medicine and the prolongation of human  life.They  somehow carry an ambivalent message as they refer to both death and life an the same time. Both states are immanent here. To preserve the beauty of the flowers artificially with the help of the infusion bags points out man’s inclination to repress the fact having to die and to postpone death" Antony Gormley  "All bodies are attracted to ...