PRIVATE VIEW - UNDERPIN by KATRINA RUSSELL-ADAMS

Katrina Russell-Adams is a South London based self-taught artist known for her vividly abstract two and three-dimensional artworks which feature geometrical shapes and a refined colour palette. Her work explores the relationships between shapes, composition and their graphical language - taking the form of murals, printmaking, assemblage, sculpture, site-specific installation and public and private commissions. She suffered a traumatic brain injury from a bicycle accident in June 2020 which has left her with cognitive impairment and fatigue. Not wanting to postpone her first solo show, The Foundry Gallery together with the artist chose to curate a show which reflects not only Katrina’s journey from her initial idea to its fruition but also the journey of continuous rehabilitation. She has seen this as an opportunity to develop a new body of work away from the comfort zone of her commercial practice.

Katrina explores the relationships between shapes, composition, surface, and their graphical language and has become more interested in form and abstraction in relation to human body - how we perceive and engage with sculptural installations. The shapes that Katrina has used in her work for UNDERPIN are all derived from architectural drawing templates that hang on her studio wall. These shapes depict the language of architecture and geometry, a continual dialogue between organic and formal shapes where she has played with scale, colour, and composition, breaking down and utilising this architectural vocabulary to create her own visual language. Katrina starts all her projects two dimensionally; playing in the studio with screen printing which she sees as a three-dimensional thought process. As she builds up her prints the initial shapes are overlaid and the translucency of each layer creates more shapes, while negative spaces between them give way to new and interesting forms.