End Matter

Commissioned by Artangel, London, and BBC Radio 4, this project combines an audio walk and installation The Loss Adjusters on the island of Portland (Dorset, 2015) with an authored publication End Matter (Book Works, London 2015) and a broadcast The Quarryman’s Daughters for Radio 4 (May 2015).

Palmer was resident on Portland in order to generate the work that evolved through exploratory walks across the intensively quarried landscape, photography, the collection of environmental and archival audio recordings, and library based research into the island’s complex social and industrial history. Accreted overlaid narrative timelines were developed to parallel the geological layers in the stone. The characters were used to embody ideas and inhabit arguments such as The Loss Adjusters who attempt to calculate the monumental scale of loss from the island. Specific items were identified and gathered to furnish The Loss Adjuster’s offices.

The narratives articulate sculpture’s physical presence as being in a dialectical relationship with absence; they extrapolate the idea that the island is in the process of being carved out, creating an inverted and unstable form, the antithesis of monuments made from Portland stone in many cities. The audience, who visited Portland to listen to the audio aspects of the storytelling, entered The Loss Adjusters’ offices before walking through the landscape, into the quarries and across the stone.

Commissioned by Artangel and BBC Radio 4
Presented on Portland by Artangel in association with b-side
Publication co-published by Artangel and Bookworks
with the support of The Henry Moore Foundation

Artangel is supported by
Arts Council England
and The Company of Angels, Special Angels and Artangel International Circle

During the production of this work Palmer was recipient of The Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists 2014

Press coverage:
‘Mysterious Portland: on Katrina Palmer’s ‘End Matter’, review by Karen Whiteson, 3:am, October 2015
‘Katrina Palmer’, review of End Matter by Gilda Williams, Art Forum, September 2015
‘Interview with Katrina Palmer’, interview by Jamie Sutcliffe, The White Review, September 2015
‘Katrina Palmer: End Matter’, review by Louise Darblay, Art Review online, July 2015
‘Katrina Palmer's "End Matter”, review by Nicholas Korody, Archinet, June 2015
‘End Matter’, review by Jamie Sutcliffe, Art Monthly, June 2015
‘Katrina Palmer: End Matter’, review Beth Bramich, This is Tomorrow, June 2015
‘End Matter by Katrina Palmer’, review by David Caddy, Tears in the Fence, May 2015
‘End Matter: Katrina Palmer explores the source of Portland stone’, review by Tom Overton, Apollo, May 2015
‘Katrina Palmer: the artist who has mined a rich seam of Nothingness.’ Interview by Miranda Sawyer, Observer, April 2015
Dorset Echo feature on End Matter, April 2015

Speaker on End Matter at conferences and symposia 2014-15
Royal Institute of British Architects, London: In conversation with Elizabeth Price 28/4/2015
B-Side, Portland, Dorset 8/10/2015: Keynote speaker at conference ‘The Excursionist’.
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds 18/6/2014: Panel speaker at public symposium ‘Does Contemporary Art Need Sculpture?’

The Quarryman’s Daughters audio files were adapted and presented alongside photographic items from The Loss Adjuster’s offices to create the work The Quarryman’s Daughter’s arrangement no. 4 shown at the group show The Weight of Data, Tate Britain, London 2015

A special edition of the End Matter book was published by Book Works 2015 ISBN: 978 1 906012 73 1 (SP)

• https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/end-...
• https://www.bookworks.org.uk/node/1845
• https://www.bookworks.org.uk/node/1857