A Common Treasury : Welcome

Welcome to 'A Common Treasury', the online space for the art work of Kat Blockley.

Browse the drawings and artworks and immerse yourself in the archive of images and clips which can be found under the Shoebox Files tab. Those who wish to spend time with the 'Common Treasury' may find humour alongside grave concerns and, perhaps recognition between the inky, papery folds.

If you wish to contact Kat or suggest contributions to the archive please email kat@katblockley.com.

Connect with me on instagram @a.common.treasury.

Connect with me on Facebook A Common Treasury: Kat Blockley Art.

Short Artist Statement

With stitch, paint, print and song, Kat archives the interface of tradition and modernity in everyday life. Kat’s practice begins with the serendipitous collecting of news cuttings, photographs, prints and drawings. The collection and archiving of seemingly random items in her shoebox files is fuelled by Kat’s engagement with tradition, spectacle, nostalgia and her fascination with the ways the ephemeral and eternal intermingle. Subjectively cataloguing both the familiar and idiosyncratic Kat mines her collection to create new stitchwork pieces, paintings, songs and illustrations under the title ‘A Common Treasury’.

Threads of continuity are pulled, augmented or cut as we as a species progress in the world. Kat’s collection adapts to archive cultural shifts that bring new concerns and approaches to the communities served by local newspapers from food banks to changes in weather and gender roles. Kat often focuses on the land and the way it shapes human life. She is interested in how we present ourselves and how subject matter may have been treated differently in the past or elsewhere than it is here and now.

Drawing viewers in to explore reminders of cultural shifts, Kat asks us to take a closer look, to consider where the thresholds lie between what we venerate, criticise and ridicule. This acknowledging of threads of continuity through conversation between old and new and the discovery of the exceptional in the everyday invites viewers to wonder, connect, critique, and smile in recognition as they are beguiled by vignettes from life.

Click here for detailed artist statement and my CV

Purchase prints and greetings cards designed by Kat for Strandline on Bandcamp.