Katie Schwab
a cloud + a fence, 2024
Katie Schwab’s artwork a cloud + a fence is a series of blue enamel shapes and painted street furniture. It marks the journey between Star Lane DLR station and Cody Dock and is a collaboration between the artist and the community. Emerging from a series of drawing, collage, block-printing and cyanotype workshops with local people, the installation references the area’s cultural, natural and industrial heritage.
The local urban landscape and its natural environment inform each of the abstract shapes. The vibrant blue echoes the natural and synthetic dyes, like blue indigo used by textile producers all along the Lower Lea throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and Meldola’s Blue, which was invented locally.
a cloud + a fence is one of three co-commissions developed by The Line in collaboration with local residents.
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Biography
Katie Schwab (b. Hackney, 1985) is an artist who works with installation, textiles, furniture and moving image to explore personal and social histories of craft, design, and education. Her research focuses on twentieth- century domestic textiles and civic architecture. Embedded in the communities and contexts in which she works, Schwab’s projects incorporate collaborative workshops, archival research and craft- based learning.
Schwab received her MFA from The Glasgow School of Art in 2015. Recent exhibitions include British Art Show 9, Hayward Gallery Touring (2021-22), small wares, Vleeshal, Middelburg, The Netherlands (2021); Another Crossing, Artists Revisit the Mayflower Voyage, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA, USA & The Box, Plymouth, UK (2021-22), A Working Building, The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth (2019) and This Interesting and Wonderful Factory, Clore Sky Studio Commission, Tate St Ives, St Ives (2018).
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Katie Schwab stands on Cody Road. Credit: Reece Straw.
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