Preview Katy Devine's systm:rd

An exhibition of rational art based of the straight lines of the city comes to Brahm Gallery

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Visual artist Katy Devine must have heard many-a-pun on her surname over the years. The word ‘divine’ rings in the ear long after you realise the spelling is ever-so-slightly different – and besides that, her artwork expresses nothing of the word’s associations – no vast landscapes, angels singing or beams of light emanating from behind a cloud.

Instead, Devine’s work is rational, linear and formulated. Obsessed with the un-natural city landscape, she takes inspiration from high-rise buildings, concrete slabs and the movement and layered communication of people in cities. The result is systm: rd – a retrospective exhibition of Leeds-graduate Devine’s work, on show at the Brahm gallery in Headingley until 7th May.

Devine admits that she loves straight lines and squares. She works on graph paper, pixelates and magnifies colours; carefully scalpels lines from brightly-coloured pieces of card; takes rubbings not from the bark of a tree but the outside “skin” of a building. In the city, whether it’s Leeds or Berlin, Devine finds solace in straight architectural lines and repeated pattern.

Works on show include systm (vii) – overlaying patterns of numbers and characters, straights lines and cement-rubbings: the result looks like a kind of matrix or unfathomable code, but represent layers of communication and overlapping interactions. Stra?es(i) shows cuttings from bright card where the silhouette of a man-made skyline has been neatly scalpeled out.

One of the most striking works in the collection is embossed – a series of six works on white paper showing patterns of neatly-raised squares. Explaining the work, Devine says she took a photograph of the same block of high-rise flats in Berlin at the same time over the course of a week. “Each night at 10pm, I’d take a photo of the flats. The raised squares on the paper show which lights were on at at that particular time. They tell a whole story about the people who lived there and the cycle of the city.”

Linear, neat and in now way whimsical – but divine to look at all the same…

Until 7 May, Monday to Friday (not banj holidays), 10am-5pm, free. For more information visit www.katydevine.co.uk or visit www.brahm.com/gallery

Posted on Thursday 1st April 2010
SH

Brahm Gallery

Brahm Building, 9a Alma Road, Headingley, Leeds, LS6 2AH

You are in: Art » Preview »Katy Devine's systm:rd