Rob Olins FRSS and Kathy Prendergast FRSS In Conversation

Introducing Material Encounters, a new online series of talks presented by independent curator and cultural producer Isabel de Vasconcellos. Each conversation pairs two Fellows of the Society and invites them to zoom in on a shared element of their practice: to unpack how they work with a particular material or process, exploring what draws them to it and how it has come to define their sculptural language. 

For our next conversation on Wednesday 25 March, we are pleased to have Rob Olins FRSS and Kathy Prendergast FRSS so click on the link to register and join!

Rob Olins FRSS

Olins' work is Art Science based. He uses a wide range of materials to create artworks from the micro to the macro in scale as well as collaborating with scientists psychologists and musicians.

I am a sculptor informed by architecture, acoustics and modern engineering techniques, with particular emphasis on the boundaries between art and science. He uses traditional materials combined with sound and digital technology. I have collaborated with many architects including Foster Associates, Edward Cullinan Studio and BDP in the UK, FGG and WS Atkins in for projects around the world. My work ranges from Seaside Light Design to Audio Installations and small experimental pieces using glass and magnets.
 

Kathy Prendergast FRSS 

Intimate in tone and subject matter, Kathy Prendergast’s practice combines drawing, sculpture and installation. What might appear minimal or elusive at first glance can encompass a complex web of emotional, personal and political resonances. Proximate to the body and connecting subjective reflections on the world, her work explores a potent cluster of issues including power, identity, landscape, memory, geography, and family. A connection between the body and landscape, often manifested through mapping, can be traced back to the beginning of her practice. Often using redaction or removal as a device, creating negative space through black ink, coloured paint or white paper, the artist erases or overwrites geographic expressions of power. Prendergast points out the subjectivity of maps, their inherent colonialism, and the ultimate fragility of borders and territories over time. Though delicate, fragile and usually on a human scale, her works also point towards the infinite – suggesting the vastness of space or the constellations of the sky. Prendergast’s work is methodical – the product of slow, repetitive processes requiring patience, precision and devotion. Faithful to mark-making, drawing and hand-crafting as well as the revelatory potential of sparking unfamiliar connections with everyday objects, her work is enigmatic, eerily beautiful and emotionally resonant. Kathy Prendergast lives and works in London.

Isabel de Vasconcellos is an independent curator and cultural producer, with extensive experience collaborating with artists and visual arts organisations to realise world-class public commissions and exhibitions. She writes on contemporary art, photography and design, and is the author of Fourth Plinth: How London Created the Smallest Sculpture Park in the World.