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Cate Inglis
Born 1975
Lives and works in Glasgow, UK
www.cateinglis.co.uk
Cate Inglis’s practice is concerned with the layers and structure of the
urban landscape: the transience of the built environment in a relentless
process of growth and change. The paintings are each a moment in time
of a particular place, as the buildings succumb to weathering, neglect
and renewal.
Inglis’s work invites questions about the things we accept and reject and
our response to perceived familiarity in a constantly shifting environment.
Using elongated landscape formats, she uses fl attened perspective and
eye-level viewpoints to create the illusion of standing in the street itself.
The paintings feature scenes from everyday life, anonymous yet familiar.
Inglis is drawn to the mundane and the overlooked: the unnoticed details
in a patchwork of grand houses, industrial wastelands, concrete offi ces
and glittering new fl ats that fi ll the streets of our cities.
Inglis is also interested in the illusion of permanence that we create for
ourselves and the fragile nature of the recognisable city in a time of
accelerating change: the split sandstone, the plugged-in brick, the
corroding metal and the peeling paintwork, overlapped by concrete,
plastic and steel. The surfaces of her paintings echo the structure of
these complex layers and act as a metaphor for how thin and temporary
everything we build ultimately is.
In Structural Supports the steel braces supporting this boarded-up
Georgian building mirror the vertical columns of this once grand structure.
Sitting alongside a Brutalist concrete offi ce and a scaffolded Victorian
factory, this street is a fascinating patchwork of neglected urban
architecture. Using a variety of masking techniques, Inglis has allowed
areas of underpainting to show through to describe certain areas of this
scene: the boarded up windows and structural supports. A combination
of distressing and dry-brush techniques describes the stonework, peeling
paint and plant life.
Void I: Department Store was the Winning work of the 2013 Armour Award
for Landscape Painting of Distinction by the Royal Glasgow Institute, and
depicts the controversial Goldberg's building just prior to its demolition.
This enormous, abandoned building had stood in a worsening state of
decay for over 10 years, right at the heart of Glasgow's city centre - the
council being unable to demolish it without the owner's permission. The
building fi nally came down in Autumn, 2013. It was important for Inglis to
capture the effects of neglect, nature and vandalism on this imposing
structure. By building up and stripping back layers of paper and paint,
and using a combination of distressing techniques, she allowed the paint
to organically describe the textures of mouldering concrete, cracking
brickwork and broken glass.
CATE INGLIS is a Scottish painter and printmaker and 2013 winner of the RGI Armour
Award for landscape painting of distinction. The recipient of two awards while
attending Glasgow School of Art, since graduating she exhibits nationally and is
represented by well-established galleries in Scotland. She currently works from her
home-studio in the West End of Glasgow surrounded by post-industrial inspiration. Above: Factories, 2014, Oil and Pencil on Paper Collage.
Many of her works have been acquired for private collections. h: 18cm w: 50cm d: 4cm, Private Collection.

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