Arcadia Art Consultancy is pleased to present its inaugural gallery exhibition, Wrack Line, by Katie St. Clair. Wrack Line follows natural and human interventions along coasts. Walking along any coastline, one is immediately confronted with the organic and the man-made; alongside stones, shells, and organic matter, the refuse polluting our oceans is processed and materialized by the natural environment, creating moments of invention and chance. St. Clair’s work is rooted in the same chance, employing man-made trash, expired paint, and natural spills to build intricate layers on canvas, burlap, and paper. Through experimentation with materials and application processes, St. Clair channels the effects of tides, erosion, and fossilization. Wrack Line displays St. Clair’s organic processing of natural and fabricated objects through works from the artist’s Tidelines, What Passes Through, and Studies of Gálgahl'yaan series.
Tidelines takes inspiration from the processed debris of the coast. St. Clair plays with the spontaneity of nature by pouring acrylic paints on the floor of her studio to make her own organic shapes. She then peels the paint and applies it to canvas, creating shapes formed by her studio environment and reminiscent of natural tides. In What Passes Through, St. Clair continues to meditate on the coastline, as well as its natural and unnatural debris, but pushes her experimentation further with the inclusion of debris and synthetic materials into each piece. To create these tapestries, St. Clair pours paint onto textured burlap, then applies layers of paper pulp, detritus, and more paint. Bringing these elements together causes them to react with one another, forming fissures evocative of grykes, cracks that form in rocks during fossilization. The final series, Studies of Gálgahl'yaan, explores the practice of foraging within a specific cultural and regional context. Inspired by the shells of now-endangered gálgahl'yaan, or Northern Abalone sea snails, St. Clair explores their significant relationships to the Haida people and the natural landscape. The Haida people, indigenous to Haida Gwaii in the Pacific Northwest and residents of the region for millennia, prize the shells for their connection to the ocean. Rather than applying collected materials themselves in these works, St. Clair meditates on the practice and impact of foraging the landscape.
Through each series, St. Clair brings the spontaneity and creative processes of the ocean, its pollutants, and inhabitants into her painting practice. Through her use of unconventional materials and use of explorative processes, St. Clair has crafted an organic practice to create natural tides of her own.