A seam. A connector. A join. Audible. A trembling. A process. (Sarah Tutt, 2020)

On viewing WHEN SEAMS BECOME AUDIBLE, one immediately knows this work is conceived by Fitz. Signature acts of translation and transformation are visible - the space is filled with an architectural and industrial vernacular; elemental forms are honed from the space in which they sit; there is raw yet precise use of unadulterated materials.

This work is physical. The labour of manual processes is tangible - turning, pulling, pressing, carving, extracting, pouring, wrapping, peeling and casting. They require the body of the artist as a tool, as energy and as a force. A tight taxonomy of colour and texture holds the elements together. The palate is familiar but developed - exhumed from the materials themselves – with muted, dusty tones of the flesh of plaster, unglazed ceramic, unadulterated metal and wood and the pale skin of latex and hessian.

The 2D profiles of the space are translated into a series of 3D corporeal bodies. We are initially confronted by a heavy, seamed, wounded carcass of a body hanging from chains, in a state of suspended animation. It demands to be looked at, offering us a 360degree view of its surfaces and fissures. Other works play out through the space as if extensions to it. It is as if the space-as-body has been recut, reconfigured and recalibrated. It is as if the space has given birth to iterations of itself. All elements are as interior to the space as a foetus is to a belly. A genetic code has been imprinted from the walls, windows, ceilings and surfaces of the surrounds, and corporeal wounds, veins and skin have been inherited.

This work is born of the space. It has been made in the space, not imported. We walk not only around a gallery but also around the artist’s studio, where sculptural forms beckon us to trace a journey from one to another. It is in this tracing that we, the viewer, stitch the work together. We provide the thread. It is perhaps in this stitching when seams become audible.

Originally from Austria, Katharina speaks English, Spanish, Catalan, French and German. It is not surprising that the processes of translation between ideas, materials and spaces seep into her work, or that she uses grammatical re-visioning and wordplay to lead the viewer into a process of decoding. In WHEN SEAMS BECOME AUDIBLE there is a strong sense that the work is waiting for this to happen, waiting for us to stich it together.

Walk, breathe and listen.

On UNDOING and RECLAMATION (Sarah Tutt, 2020)

On the 1st November 2020 at 2pm, WHEN SEAMS BECOME AUDIBLE came to an abrupt Covid-regulatory end. Fitz made the decision to de-commission the work in situ and live-stream it over Instagram. Two time-lapsed cameras transmitted split screen images as the artist butchered and disembowelled the central element Window. The making of this heavy, bolted, hung and skewered work involved force and hard labour, so the de-construction was bound to be physical. A syncopated duet of smashing, drilling, ripping, sawing and hammering underscored this performative eulogy. The ferocity of Fitz’s actions shook our view. Window did not go quietly. It swayed and rattled its chains as its body parts were strewn across the floor. There was a feeling Fitz may have created something stronger than herself, but her sheer force transformed the once-was into a material wasteland before our eyes. As Window was turned from body to rubble, a shift in visual landscape brought with it a shift in visual hierarchy: the unmade over the made, potential over the realised, artist over the work. We are used to seeing Fitz’s force within her work, here we witness it over it. The artist is present. Without script. Without score. Uncertain.