Step Away Closer Cathy Dorman

Step Away Closer | Cathy Dorman

Step Away Closer is Cathy Dorman’s response to Rietveld Schröder House (Utrecht, 1924) which was designed by Gerrit Rietveld in collaboration with Truus Schröder . Through her rigorous work processes, Dorman has developed a close knowledge of the house but a formal distance from those who once inhabited it.

Dorman makes models to explore the areas within this home, a slow and painstaking journey. Through black and white photography of these models, she investigates light within these spaces breaking it down into a series of planes, offering an intensely palpable experience.

The style of architecture (De Stijl) plays a secondary role, as Dorman’s interest lies in the woman who wanted a house without internal walls. For Truus Schröder the home represented more than a retreat, it was place in which a new way of life could be discussed and experienced. Rietveld Schröder House helped create a modern consciousness, a sense that daily life and values were staged and enacted in a work of architecture that was designed and built with a larger purpose in mind. These ideas and experiences were directly related to Schroder’s broad social and intellectual goals which helped to shape and define the course of modern architecture.

Dorman’s paintings focus on objects and interiors which draw the viewer in making them acutely and immersively aware of their surroundings, establishing a sense of place which is constructed yet deconstructed, homey yet strange, familiar yet surreal. There is always something liminal at play, small shifts of focus, an uncertainty and otherness that never quite explains itself. At times the work slides towards abstraction in form but never in mood, which remains resolutely tangible. This however, remains a process that is at times contradictory. A home, always inside and outside at the same time.

Formerly a practising architect, Dorman graduated in Fine Art from NCAD in 2020. Her first solo show titled ‘Domestic Planes’ took place at the Ashford Gallery, RHA in March 2022. Dorman exhibited in a two person show ‘Double Bounce’ at The Copper House Gallery in September 2023. She has exhibited in group exhibitions at RHA, RUA, Dunamaise Arts Centre, Hang Tough Gallery, Outset Gallery Galway and Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray.