Artist Catherine Chinatree will join the Rise Up Residency project looking at Margate’s underwater cultural heritage, writes Marijke Hall

“I like the idea of actually having a point to say because if it’s just putting paint on a wall, something that doesn’t consider the community, that doesn’t have anything to say about the state of the world we live in, I don’t see the point”

It doesn’t take a genius to work out why Catherine Chinatree is one of the artists getting involved in the upcoming Rise Up Residency project.

Run by environmentally-driven artist Louis Masai in collaboration with local CIC Rise Up Clean Up, the art series is set to enlighten Margate’s walls later this year with eco-focused, ocean conservation-inspired murals from artists with the same mindset.

And Catherine, a multidisciplinary visual artist living in Margate, is all about what it stands for.

Her own work has multiple layers, focusing on identity, dualism – showing different extremes of her themes – and cultural fluidity.

She believes street art should be relevant and portray something other than just paint on a wall.

“Street art to me is sometimes a bit ‘look what I can do’ and it’s not got much relevance,” she says. “It’s shifted somewhat from the 1990s when it was about being anti-establishment.

“Now that people have got permission to do walls, it needs to be relevant, it should say something and have context.”

Catherine says in places like Shoreditch in east London some companies have even started using street art as a way to advertise.

“There’s a lot of commercial art that is designed to be like street art, but you can tell it’s clearly an advert.

“What Louis is doing is great because he is relevant and this project is relevant – Louis knows this world and he knows how to respond.

“I like the fact that RUR feels fresh and moves art into another area. It’s saying something.

“People respond to artwork and this makes it accessible – it sends a message.

“I know Louis is going to do it in a manner that is inclusive, too, and that’s why I was interested in it as well.”

Catherine, like Louis, moved to Margate from London and her current body of work – Walpole Orchestra – focuses on the daily ritual of bathing in the sea at the tidal pool in Cliftonville.

She now swims regularly herself, even in winter, and she’s been observing the behaviour of other swimmers, including the ecstatic response of submerging in the chilly waters.

It’s extremes such as these – the ecstasy versus fear, and the emotional, spiritual and physical differences – that she captures in her work.

“There have been quite a few changing points in the direction that my work has gone,” she says.

“It’s changeable because I work in a way of what’s happening at that point.

“So moving to Margate, I’d never responded to the sea before, all my work’s been about people and culture, heritage, but moving here and taking up sea-swimming it just completely changed again because I’ve never done it before and I wanted to respond to it.”

Her practice is both studio- and outdoor-based, meaning the upcoming RUR project is a perfect fit.

She has already created a mural for The Margate School of artist Edmonia Lewis in New Street, as well as for the Bring The Paint festival in Leicester.

“There are lots of different elements to my work,” says Chinatree, who is of Welsh, Caribbean and Irish mixed heritage – something she says is portrayed in her work.

“My thing is I love to take studio work outside and for there not to be a massive difference.

“So rather than it be ‘this is studio, this is outdoor’, I like to see how I can blend the two together so it transfers.”

Her upcoming contribution to RUR will see her collaborate with local historian and researcher Peter Antony Nicholls looking at shipwrecks off the Thanet coast.

“I’ll develop a design that will explore Margate’s underwater cultural heritage in relation to origin stories of the diasporic world we’ve inherited,” she explains.

“We will look at underwater ancestors and how wrecks in the water make our seas a sacred space.

“Peter has been developing this research over the last year and it is very eye-opening and exciting to be part of this process.”

Capturing the project’s theme of ocean conservation, she will also look at the devastation caused by rubbish in the sea, which inevitably ends up in these underwater burial sites.

Chinatree says she knew Louis long before coming to Margate – the pair attended Falmouth College of Arts together – but didn’t realise they had both recently moved to the same town.

“Funnily enough, I bumped into him on the beach and I told him I wanted to paint more murals,” she says. Chinatree has a long list of accolades including the People’s Choice Award at Southbank Arts in Bristol and she was also the selected artist for Artquest London’s The Light of Day project.

She’s also had plenty of commissions, including the Black Icon Portrait commission for People Dem Collective at the Margate Now festival.

She was most recently commissioned for a window installation for Artquest’s 20th anniversary, Not Just A Shop, for University of the Arts London.

The RUR project, she says, fits in nicely with her general theme of water, which she’s been responding to through her Walpole Orchestra work.

But she’s excited about doing more work in her new hometown of Margate.

“There’s definitely a scene down here, but I feel like having people like Louis here for example and doing this project, it’s creating that platform and it’s going to get more interesting,” she says.

“I lived in Kingston and sometimes if I did a show it was hard to get people to come and see it.

“In Margate, people want to come. There are some really great galleries that have opened up and some great artists. It’s a good place to be.”

INSTA: @catherinechinatree

INFO: www.chinatree.me