Alpine Spoilers appropriates text from the collection of mountaineering memoirs, in The Fell & Rock Climbing Club of the English Lake District archives, held in The Armitt Library in Ambleside, UK. The books are first-hand accounts of journeys in The English Lakes, The Alps, The Himalayas and further afield, from Victorian times to the present day. Alpine Spoilers is a playful edit of the memoirs, gathering quotes from the last paragraphs from over 100 books in which the author summarises the experience and creates a poignant finale. Through the alpinist’s words, the text explores tensions between the draws of the aesthetic canons of romanticism and the real possible outcomes of pain and death. In the final pages, the author weighs the advantages of pleasure and power versus risk. Alpine Spoilers fast-tracks the reader to where the narrative meets it’s affective climax. Alpine Spoilers was commissioned by The Armitt Museum & Library, Cumbria for their centenary exhibition Sublime Transactions. Supported by the Arts Council England. Alpine Spoilers was recently acquired by the TATE Gallery, London.

More info: http://www.katemorrell.com

Kate Morrell is a London based artist whose work engages with archives as part of an expanded art practice. Her research-led practice takes the form of sculpture, drawing and book works. She gained an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2010. Recent projects have been realised at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, English Heritage’s Landguard Fort, Suffolk & The Armitt Museum & Library, Cumbria. Kate Morrell approaches libraries and archives as a catalyst to new work, addressing such sites as material and subject for an expanded art practice and not simply as neutral, transparent sites of record. The multidisciplinary nature of her practice has engaged with disciplines outside of the traditional remits of the arts, including archaeology and science.