Kate Aughey’s mixed media collages are rooted in nostalgia with visual threads of connection laid between our ancient past and the present.

Themes and motifs recur like echoes of childhood when folktales and ritual allowed us to make sense of an uncertain world. Aughey is frequently drawn to animals as symbols and in particular snakes, whose symbolic duality represents both fear and death as well as fertility and rebirth.

Birds  recur as guardians or messengers but are frequently hampered and earth bound, exploring notions of clipped wings and containment. Aughey seeks to explore the interplay between ease and discomfort and a creeping sense of the uncanny. In her ‘Domestic Shaman’ and ‘Quiet Folk’ series, found photographs conjure archetypal characters whose connections to nature evoke myths which feel both familiar and strange.