My work is grounded in an exploration of ‘landscape’ through colour and texture. Visually, I create bold, visceral works that stretch between two and three dimensions. My work is often site-responsive and my large scale works are created and exhibited in remote, wild locations, inviting audiences to experience the works in situ. I use strokes and colour combinations as a way to invite the audience to explore colour perception. My work features the interplay of light and tone to create a balance of motion. I drip, scrape, bruise and blush colour onto surfaces. Layering textures becomes a way to investigate the relationship between positive and negative, and offers a shift in perspective to the viewer. This physical application of colour to a surface draws attention to the environments we inhabit.

Not only do I respond to the landscape but I create colour from within the landscape. The process of creating paints and pigments from materials gathered at specific locations has allowed me to contrast factory produced colours with a more sustainably centred approach to making.

BIOGRAPHY

Kari is an artist based out of The Model, Sligo, on the North-west Coast of Ireland. She has presented work throughout Ireland, in France, and more recently in Brazil after she was awarded the Arts Council’s Travel & Training award. She is represented by SO Fine Art, Dublin and was a featured artist at VUE 2018 at the RHA. In 2018 she exhibited alongside Rebecca Curling in “Coalesce”, Studio 10, as well as at The Doswell and Wilds Gallery in West Cork.

Kari has participated in residencies in India (Space 118, Bombay 2016) and Brazil (Na Casa,Florianopolis 2019). Kari was an invited guest speaker at Basic Talks (2019), Above the Fold (2017), Short Stories (2018) and New Ecologies of Practice, NCAD, 2012. Her projects have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Irish Times and Bloomers Magazine. Kari is a member of the Graphic Print Studio, Dublin

She is the Co-Director and Co-Founder of Lay of the Land (LOTL) - a site-responsive arts organisation producing residencies and exhibitions in remote locations around Ireland, and participates as both artist and curator. The projects holds a strong position regarding the support of emerging female artists. Since 2016 LOTL have delivered 9 large scale site-responsive projects. The projects have been self-funded, as well as through the Arts Council, Cork County Council and Creative Ireland. A documentary, by Filmmaker Fellipe Lopes, following ‘Silva 18’ project screened at The Guesthouse, Cork, and at Segunda Segunda, Sao Paulo. At its core, LOTL challenges artists and audiences by driving artists to create informed artworks of a quality and depth demanded by the magnitude of their surrounding landscapes.

In 2011,In response to the recession, and the number of vacant building in Dublin, Kari set up ‘Basic Space’ - a not-for-profit artist-led contemporary art space, and was Director of the space until 2014. Through Basic Space, Kari produced work for the closing ceremony of EV+A International as part of Gracelands 2012, as well as taking up residency at IMMA and TBG+S. .