Katie Watson is based in North East of England and is soon to graduate from Newcastle University with a First-Class Honours in BA Fine Art. Her current practice examines the abstract qualities of banal forms in contemporary culture, the universal language of visual information, and how this is interpreted and processed.
Katie's practice pursues a disjointed discourse, translating methods of “do it yourself” assembly into painting, visually describing movements and processes which are ubiquitous and universally understood. Her work originates from an interest in entirely visual methods of communication, whereby linguistics are replaced with directional motifs. This vocabulary of forms includes arrows, dotted lines and speech bubbles.
Through the development of her own visual language, the constructed dialogues involve fragments of pure description interrupted by areas of ambiguous, abstract shape. The paintings are essentially exercises in ‘gap filling’ providing only fragments of information. These elements are visual descriptions of single specific properties, such as an outline, colour, or texture. This fragmented schematisation creates an interrupted logic in her work.
Constructed on bare birch plywood, Katie’s paintings celebrate the inherent qualities of this traditional construction material upon which she explores diagrammatic form and mechanical language. Her process involves the accumulation of diagrammatic information found in instructional flat-pack furniture booklets, vehicular maintenance manuals, and model construction kits. She then reinterprets fragments of this information through painting, multi-dimensional assemblages and dysfunctional objects.
As well as re-appropriating found diagrammatic imagery, Katie designs and produces her own every-day, functional objects and from this develops her own instruction manuals. The constructed object is never exhibited, giving the paintings a vague as they negotiate between image and object. This play of formal values creates equivalencies between instruction and abstract form.
.png?modified=20250630105204)
In recognition of their outstanding achievements, Northumbria University will confer honorary…
An international conference celebrating the music of the medieval and Renaissance periods will…
A student team from Northumbria University’s Business Clinic is helping a pioneering renewable…
Northumbria University graduate, Rob Law MBE, joined sleep scientists and design experts from…
An Assistant Professor at Northumbria University won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Award…
The Summer 2025 edition of Northumbria University’s newspaper is available to collect on campus…
Savvy students from Northumbria University Business Clinic have been helping one of the UK’s…
In this article originally written for The Conversation*, Dr Muhammad Wakil Shahzad, Associate…
Squires Workshops
School of Design
School of Design
School of Design, Northumbria University
Back to top
