Screw Up, Repeat

A creeping mass of a black lava-like substance swamps a derelict house. The same material clusters high in a medieval cathedral screen like an unkempt insect nest. It is found huddling on chairs and ironing boards. It fills gallery walls and crawls up walls.

This tissue paper has been repeatedly crushed and flattened to near destruction, then seemingly cast aside. This overworking has left it friable and almost formless, yet the massed individual sheets have a collective form; lumpy and awkward.

This has clearly taken hundreds of hours of labour to create, begging the question: why? What are these sheets of screwed-up paper a remnant of? There is some anxious and unrelenting state being played out in this incessant action and a sense of worthlessness in the careless abandonment of these overwrought objects.

Kate McDonnell, 2019
[tissue paper]

Screw Up, Repeat
We Are For The Dark, 195 Mare St., Hackney, London, 2023

Screw Up, Repeat
We Are For The Dark, 195 Mare St., Hackney, London, 2023

Screw Up, Repeat
We Are For The Dark, 195 Mare St., Hackney, London, 2023

Screw Up, Repeat (Refuge)
We Are For The Dark, 195 Mare St., Hackney, London, 2023

Screw Up, Repeat
Kate McDonnell: Processing, The Art House, Wakefield, 2023


Screw Up, Repeat
Kate McDonnell: Processing, The Art House, Wakefield, 2023
(image: Emily Ryalls)

Screw Up, Repeat
Wells Art Contemporary, Wells Cathedral, 2022

Screw Up, Repeat
Wells Art Contemporary, Wells Cathedral, 2022

Screw Up, Repeat (detail)
Wells Art Contemporary, Wells Cathedral, 2022

Screw Up, Repeat (detail)
This Is Not A Shop, Bath, 2021

Screw Up, Repeat
In The Windows, That Art Gallery, Bristol, 2020 (image: Andy Phipps)

Screw Up, Repeat: Lockdown Installation
Disordered States, Fringe Arts Bath, 2020

Screw Up, Repeat: Lockdown Installation
Disordered States, Fringe Arts Bath, 2020

Screw Up, Repeat: Lockdown Installation
Disordered States, Fringe Arts Bath, 2020

Screw Up, Repeat
Disordered States, Fringe Arts Bath, 2019

Screw Up, Repeat (detail)
Disordered States, Fringe Arts Bath, 2019