Traces of Living (glass, light, soundscape) is inspired by Neolithic remains dotted around Caithness, Scotland. These ancient ruins are a potent memento of people who lived here over millennia. When archaeologists dug down into the soil, they uncovered layers of lives, one on top of another; fragments of dwellings that shift their shapes through time. They are a reminder of a past barely familiar to us, when humanity laid its first footprint on the landscape and learnt to survive with nature, subservient to its wild land and weather. All that is left of lives lived long ago are a few traces and fragments of pottery. Ground plans of tombs are unearthed, looking like tender wombs laid bare. Perhaps death is just a reversal of birth, a return to the warm embrace of nature as mother.
Working with composer Freddie Graham, we explored archaeoacoustics and theories on how ancient cultures might have engineered and manipulated sound in sacred spaces to enter altered states of consciousness. The soundscape emulates this with a very low 4Hz Schumann resonance found in the Grey Cairns of Camster — this cannot be heard by the human ear, yet the body can feel it, in the same way that Neolithic sounds aimed to go beyond the realms of the subconscious. Also present is the Helmholtz resonance, like wind blowing across a bottle. Combined, the two resonate around the stone walls of the space, along with other traces of human sounds, perhaps making the unheard heard and resurrecting a little of whatever it was that inspired them.
Katharine Dowson creates installations and standalone work inspired by nature, medicine, and the scientific world, often collaborating with academics in their fields of expertise. Dowson received an MA in sculpture from the Royal College of Art in 1992. Her work was selected for New Contemporaries 1992, and acquired by Charles Saatchi. It is included in the publication, Shark-Infested Waters: The Saatchi Collection of British Art in the 90s by Sarah Kent. Dowson's work has been exhibited extensively and is included in the collections of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland; University College London Art Museum; Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland; and the Wellcome Collection, London, amongst others. Dowson's work, River of Life (2019), was long-listed for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2024, and she was selected as a finalist in the Fondation Francois Schneider's Contemporary Talents 12th edition in 2022.
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