"I’m excited about my new solo work grove which will have its first outing in early October 2014. Its my PhD major work, and seemingly is quite a   departure from my previous areas of interest and making. Yet through my PhD research at UNSW I’ve been able to focus tightly on my life long interest in what is it to be moved, and as an artist, to move people. groveis inspired by the soft architectural form of the grove. Occurring naturally, found enhanced by culture, and manifested entirely as hard architecture (the prototypical mosque, for example) groves provide what architects Hildbrand and Appleby call both ‘refuge’ and ‘prospect’ making them an archetypal geo-spatial ’setting’ to which humans are attracted. In my installation grove, the trees have been replaced by light, an abstraction that is part of an minimalist aesthetic I am employing. I want to provide an environment in which there is pure form, no content, in which audiences can hopefully get in touch with the perceptions of light and space that are fundamental to our engagement in an environment.

This research is based on my explorations of the premise that before we consciously (or are conscious of) doing, feeling and knowing – say in the context of a media installation – a sequence of fleeting exchanges between us and the environment have set in train a wave or flow of molecular and neurological reactions that are called affects. In a quiet environment such as a grove, we can ideally perceive affects more clearly; in an environment with less visual and aural noise, we can become immersed in ourselves and our responses."

- Kate Richards, 2014