Kate Stone

Heartswell

Kate Stone

I work across installation, sculpture and animation to imagine the ways in which our minds and bodies are reflected in the spaces we occupy. I see architecture as a recording device - a structure for the accumulation of history, a repository for the things we leave behind and an extension of ourselves. My work draws from American suburbia - its aesthetics as well as its cultural role as a site for ambient dread and anxiety. I am interested in the cognitive dissonance that occurs when we consume the horrors of the external world from the (dis)comfort of our living room sofas. My animations combine stop-motion, collage and miniature sets to describe labyrinthine, distorted interiors. My sculptures employ carpet, found furniture and other household materials to imagine a process in which domestic space absorbs so much residue of life that it is animated into a living organism. Drawing inspiration from science, mythology, human anatomy and horror tropes, I build worlds that exist between interior and exterior, reality and superstition, architecture and the body. They are psychological spaces in the midst of transformation, being overtaken by supernatural forces that represent the anxiety that world events bring into our personal lives and private spaces.