Karin Ruggaber makes sculpture as well as producing artist's books. She works with a range of different media considering materials in relation to their dynamic and association with particular activities, or representational function. Recent works include relief sculptures based on an invented and self-generating vocabulary of form and materiality, using materials such as concrete, plaster, fabric and wood. Coming out of a studio-based practice the work centres on ideas around figuration, ornamentation, aspects of touch and the relationship to architectural scale; core interests are a sensory experience with architecture, looking at the imaginary and intangible components of perceived values and their translation into public space. Principles of ordering and layering are set against the roughness and imprecision of material and surface. Ideas around architecture as manifestation of aspects of territory - as something that holds rather than can be held - form part of the wider project and narrative for the work.

Current research project: Rock Room Project 

The Rock Room Project is a research and exhibition project I have set up in 2013 in collaboration with the Department of UCL Earth Sciences and UCL Museums. Working with the neighbouring context of Earth Sciences generates opportunities and questions which lie on the edge of exhibition making, looking at matter, materiality and form, as well as the fantasies surrounding the disciplines. The core of the project until 2016 was an annual 1-day pop up exhibition at the UCL Rock Room. This revolves around attempts to find new forms of exhibition making, to look at the potential of collaboration and of thinking about material and sculpture through all the senses. We explore spaces that represent other forms of logic, beliefs, knowledge and disciplines such as geology, astrophysics, or applied art. Features and events include annual UCL Earth Sciences Laboratory tours to the Rock Physics, Micropaleontology and Geochemistry Laboratories, the UCL Regional Planetary Image Facility, the UCL Marine Engineering wave machine and the Anechoic Chamber. A 1-day Sculpture Park was held at the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey in March 2015 and June 2016. A workshop and symposium on "Poison" was held at the UCL Rock Room in 2016, involving 1980s perfume ads, a geochemist, a perfumer, an Anti-Brexit campaign as well as a 16th century field surgeon's manual courtesy of UCL Special Collections. 

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/events/poison-an-anti-visual-strategy

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/events/slade-rock-room-project-2017

In 2018 we received a UCL Dean’s Strategic Fund Award for a series of workshops on "Animal Perspective". Events include a Scent and Atmosphere workshop in the UCL Anechoic Chamber, a workshop on movement with choreographer Siobhan Davies, as well as working with the presence of dogs.