Biography
Kate Pelling is an artist and curator originally from UK and now based in Germany. She is best known for video works using direct address to camera and artist’s books of drawings that investigate transdisciplinary editing processes. In 2016 she completed her PhD at Chelsea College of Arts, London, titled ‘Select Reject Reconfigure: Editing Speech in Artists' Direct Address to Camera’. Pelling has exhibited extensively in the UK and the USA, and also in Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, and Switzerland, including a retrospective at the Shortini International Film Festival, Augusta, Italy (2011) and a solo exhibition at The Idea Store Whitechapel, London (2014). In 2012, the artist founded Fifth Floor Publications which is a publishing platform for artists’ books that use transdisciplinary methods, with an emphasis on experimental works that examine aspects of making artists’ film and video and/or drawing practices. Publications include Bearbeitungsklappe [Editing Flap] (2016), [Video] Klappe (2014) and A Relational [Video] Grammar: Extrapolation (2013).
Artist's Statement
In my practice I use transdisciplinary methods to create visual conversations on the nature of being an artist at a time of great political and economic instability. My research-based practice also examines editing processes in artists' video, extending the language of editing beyond existing conventions. The current project '50 Wigs' uses wigs that were collected over many years and most of them have appeared in previous video works. The wigs provide layered narratives within the work as well as acting as an absurd kind of ‘community’. The resulting series of videos challenges ideas around collections and communities. In previous work I also made work on the relationship between speech and editing processes in artists' direct address to camera and ideas around a simulacra of performance.