Patricia Paolozzi Cain

ELECTED ARWS 2015

Patricia Paolozzi Cain is involved with the idea that you can make something terribly complex and through making it, it becomes nothing. She often seeks this absence though a process that involves intense scrutiny.

Invariably, Paolozzi Cain's work is on the cusp of both abstraction and figuration - a place where observation turns inwards. For her, energy is fundamental. The dominant energy resides in empty space: it is the absence or negative space that activates the artwork, yet also makes it unstable.

Resonating with concerns in science, Paolozzi Cain connects with the idea that the artist operates as a self -referencing system of processes, where thinking occurs through the body, and the exchange of process and energy leads to continual transformation. The importance of the evolution of the artist rather than the artefact underpins my practice and she is interested in communicating this aspect through curation.

Paolozzi Cain lives and works in Dumfries and Galloway and completed a PhD at Glasgow School of Art in 2008. She won both the Aspect and Threadneedle Prizes in 2010. Following a major 5 month solo exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Galleries in Glasgow called Drawing (on) Riverside in 2011, she curated the exhibition Built, a London Festival of Architecture event at the Mall Galleries in 2012.

Patricia Paolozzi Cain's present work has been significantly influenced by the three month residency she was awarded by the RSA and Barns-Graham Charitable Trust in 2013 to live and work at Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s house in St Andrews. As a result, she is currently preparing for a touring exhibition in 2016 provisionally named Seeing beyond the thing: exploring the Scottish artist's movement between representation and abstraction.