The Medium

Kate Rampling

Black Asterisk
10 Ponsonby Road, Auckland

27 April - 18 May 2019

"Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner?" - Francesca Woodman

Kate Rampling’s solo show The Medium mulls over the idea of the artist acting as a medium of communication.

Utilising self-portraiture as a direct means of communication, Rampling sees the act itself becoming a kind a ritual containing its own power. Her work stems from the gothic tradition of literature and fairy-tales; of heroines and villainess' who gain their strength through self-contemplation and self-knowledge, while also considering female representation throughout the art history canon from a feminist and expressionist point of view. Seeking to divert the female experience away from the body to that of the mind or spirit, spontaneous and intuitive movement is heavily used in the series. The movement creates a ghostly blur which subconsciously reveals the artists inner world.

Aesthetically this is linked to the Spiritualists of the Victorian era, who believed that communication with the dead was possible, while it is thematically connected to psychic mediums. Like a medium, the artist acts as a communicator of ideas and universal truths. The artistic process remains mysterious, the act of creation brings knowledge into light.

Meanwhile, Rampling claims, “I have the opportunity to examine different roles within myself; those that do not exist outside of the image making process or how I wish to present myself to others. Thus, transcending the everyday and entering the realm of the extraordinary.