Date: 2019
Media: wood
Dimensions: 720 × 3158 × 400 mm
Catalogue number: 2022–1–01
Credit line: Gift of the artist, 2022
Following on from her series of chair-like objects, in 2011 Kath Foster began working on a series of 17 reproportioned tables.
Each table enacts the same idea: it is an ordinary kitchen table reshaped to be half as wide and twice as long as it was before, carrying over its marks of wear; if you like, its untold stories. The tables set out to balance and foil the chairs with usefulness. Each table becomes illogical for only a short time, when it is being cut up and reassembled, before being returned to the world to continue its life as a table. The tables double down on the functionality that the chairs lack, but their stories remain opaque. The chairs offer a heavy dose of meaning though at the cost of being useful. The two series together have separated use and meaning, normally combined in objects, by condensing one quality into each kind of object to make a dysfunctional furniture that asks: what would living in houses be like if use and meaning were mutually exclusive? Kath Foster
At a practical level the tables lend themselves to collaborations with others. Kath Foster suggests that they ‘could be offered up to carvers, visual artists or writers who would inscribe the tables with significant narratives. This could be done as a group activity, or by individuals telling their own stories; in both cases the voices would accelerate the transformation of this once-colonial object towards its new future.’ Kath Foster’s vision for her tables is that they will eventually find homes in community settings, to be used for meetings formal or informal, or for panel discussions. At Toi MAHARA Reproportioned Table no. 10 has been used as display furniture and for community workshops.