Kate Tucker
Fingerbreadth
24 May - 1 July 2023

Kate Tucker’s solo exhibition Fingerbreadth brings together a body of ‘hybrid’ sculptures comprising plinth-like forms stacked with ceramic bases and paintings, as well as small wall-based ‘tablet’ paintings. The works are the result of a process of material experiments with clay, paint and textile forms, which aggregate and layer into formal surface and support-like arrangements. Through the works Tucker engages a discussion of the hand-made in the digital era, of physical rather than screen-mediated experience.

Fingerbreadth is titled for the informal measurement of the width of a finger, also known as a digit. Tucker writes:

“Once, we counted units on our hands, measured scale against our bodies. Digits were fingers, rather than the 0’s and 1’s that now form the foundation of digital technology. Today, standardised rules eradicate ambiguity and we are accustomed to pressure for precision. We are preoccupied with machine learning, which promises us progress through hyper efficiency, delivering back to us a kind of random, rolling summary of ourselves. There is a fear that in outsourcing too much, we risk degrading our humanity. Perhaps this implies that our value could be located somewhere inside the inefficiency of the labour processes we are attempting to phase out. Ironically, I recently read that artificial intelligence can’t configure enough universal rules in its data set to accurately depict human hands. I often reference images from vintage DIY craft and construction books, of people making things. I too, am trawling through data in an attempt to locate that which is shared and universal. In these grainy photos of hands printing cloth, reupholstering chairs and cutting wood, are the unmeasurable facets of who we are.”

Kate Tucker is a Melbourne/Naarm-based artist. Her recent projects include solo exhibitions at Daine Singer, Cathedral Cabinet, Bus Projects, Galerie Pompom, Art Stage Singapore, Chapter House Lane, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Platform and Helen Gory, and group exhibitions at NADA New York, Sutton Projects, Dutton Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, Caloundra Regional Gallery, Castlemaine Art Museum, Swan Hill Regional Gallery, Ararat Gallery TAMA, McClelland Sculpture Park + Gallery, Murray White Room, La Trobe Art Institute, Geelong Gallery, Penrith Regional GalleryCaves, Tristian Koenig, SPRING1883, Incinerator Gallery, Bus Projects and LON Gallery. Tucker is the recipient of the 2022 Sunshine Coast Art Prize, and has been a finalist in the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, Len Fox Painting Prize, Geelong Contemporary Art Prize, The Substation Prize, Albany Art Prize, Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, The Churchie Emerging Art Prize, Geelong Acquisitive Print Awards, and The Archibald Prize. Her work is held in collections including Artbank, Shepparton Art Museum and Bendigo Art Gallery. Tucker graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2009. In late 2023 Perimeter will publish a monograph of her work.