Waiting

1980

Fibre glass, resin, parquet flooring and sewing patterns

184 x 230 cm

Purchased, 1980.

1449

Kathy Prendergast's work explores themes of love, death and loss through a complex variety of materials. Her unconventional juxtapositions, at times ironic, challenge our everyday associations and it is this strangeness that resonates. Waiting is an early work, completed during her studies at the National College of Art and Design, for which the artist won a Carroll's Award at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1980. The three seated, female figures dressed in nineteenth century gowns, suggest not only femininity but also passivity and patience. The incomplete nature of the figures, suggest a loss, maybe a result of their missing heads. The life-size figures and incorporation of real space accentuates the strangeness of the static, timeless quality of the waiting women, suggesting another reality. The dressmaking patterns traced on the wall contrast the fitted construction of the parquet flooring below, and are also suggestive of her later Mapping series. Prendergast is considered one of the foremost Irish artists of her generation and has been awarded huge recognition, notably the Premio 2000 award for Best Young Artist at the 1995 Venice Biennale. In 1996 she completed a Masters Degree at the Royal College of Art, London, where she continues to live and work.