CATHRYN QUAIL

b. 1993, Middlesex, UK. Lives and works in London

 

Education:

2015-2017,  MRes Art: Moving Image, Central Saint Martin’s, London

2012-2015, BA (Hons) Fine Art, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham

 

 

Cathryn Quail works with video, predominantly archival and appropriated imagery, to explore sub and meta-narratives via large historical events. Through these events Quail establishes a subjective, poetic narrative to subvert the source material's mediated tone, leading the viewer to question the actual reality of these events thus, blurring the lines between mediated fiction and reality. Furthermore, Quail employs video to research and examine ideas of authority as a means of divulging of truth through both objective and subjective standpoints. This is exercised through the exploration of personal, individual and collective experiences via the documentary form. The work actively and continually engages with key concerns surrounding ideas of truth and representation via the moving image as an effort to explore societal, historical and personal narrative engagement and experience by means of the medium. Not only does Quail exploit the nature of representation and the representational engagement of such experiences but simultaneously and continuously questions the authoritative integrity of the medium, material and narrative. The result of which entails the interweaving of found archival, news and candid material with her own material in an attempt to establish somewhat of a meta-narrative essay. Thus, Cathryn Quail presents a critical practice that investigates and depicts a portrait of social, political and personal issues of known historical events depicted within her work.