Katrin Koskaru: Valerie Beston Prizewinner 2013

The winner of the Valerie Beston Artists’ Trust award 2013 is Katrin Koskaru.

The VBAT prize is made up of four main elements, which are a SPACE studio for one year, a cash prize of £2,000 towards materials, an exhibition at the end of the year and support from a RCA tutor.

Here Katrin describes her practice:

My practice is about space, landscape, cityscape and atmosphere within it. Architecture is sign of power and I like to use the architecture or its ruins as a tool to understand the space and its history. I’m particularly interested in military space. I like to trace back the past and see how it connects to now. It’s important for me to position myself clearly. As an Estonian, growing up in the Soviet Union and now living in UK, how do I respond and what does matter to me in the world? So I usually start with research. I collect images from newspapers and they are mostly about war, violence, human resentment, demonstrations, destruction and ruins. I’m interested how this, often very indisposed subject can be approached aesthetically. From then on my studio work or my mark making becomes more intuitive. I often start with little drawings and watercolours from those newspaper photographs. In the studio I deconstruct the photographs and almost dematerialize certain images, as if tracing the invisible. 

To see more of Katrin’s work please visit:http://www.koskaru.com/