Kathryn Walter

Kathryn Walter's text work UN­LIMITED GROWTH INCREASES THE DIVIDE will be placed on the facade of the Contemporary Art Gallery on July 19, 1990, with the cooperation of the owners of the building. The text consists of seven inch copper letters above the entrance to the gallery. The text is cut from one quarter inch copper plate and installed in its original red metallic state, inviting a “corporate” reading. However, it will change with time and exposure, to a greenish, aged surface. The text will be visually assimilated into the existing green colour of the building, and will remain permanently on the site. This piece is the latest in a series of housing/development related works that she has produced over the past two years. In 1988 she carried out the series called Development Intervention, which involved the addition of texts from Harlequin Romances to Development Permit Application signboards. The juxtaposition between texts as representations of “power disguised as romance,” and that of the rationality of a seemingly benign description of a proposed building, provide the basis for the meaning of these works. A public text illustrative of “democracy in action” is here compared with the text of romance, and romance with insensitivity—”fingers biting into flesh” or “the weight of his will pressing down on her.” When applied to office tower construction, Walter's comments assume the status of a metaphorical commentary that points out the procedural falsity in a process that simply allows developers to carry out an end-run around the rules, as was the case with the project next to us.

• Bill Jeffries, excerpt from “The Interventions of Kathryn Walter,” in Unlimited Growth Increases the Divide , 1990