Generally of a modest, intimate scale, Newby’s work has been known to occupy entire spaces through architectural interventions. In doing so her delicate works advocate a heightened perceptual awareness and encourages consideration to the relationship between people and the environment where sculpture takes place. Deliberately situating her practice in the historical framework of Land Art, Newby takes an urban, domestic, feminist perspective on it. She offers an incisive rebuttal of this male-dominated artistic field with her preoccupation to create and underline a much more fluid, fleeting relationship with sites and materials.
Kate Newby (b. 1979, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, lives and works in Floresville, Texas) has exhibited widely and internationally. She received her Doctorate of Fine Art in 2015 from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. Recent solo exhibitions include: Hours in wind, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney 2024; anything, anything, curated by Juliane Bischoff, Klosterruine, Berlin 2024; Very active weather, KAYOKOYUKI, Tokyo 2024; miles off road, Fine Arts, Sydney, Australia 2023; What a great year for music, Marfa Book Co, Marfa, TX, USA 2023; Had us running with you, Michael Lett, Auckland, New Zealand 2023; So close, come on, The Sunday Painter, London, UK 2022; We are such stuff, Laurel Gitlen, New York 2022 ; COLD WATER, Fine Arts, Sydney 2021; Nothing in my life feels big enough, Cooper Cole, Toronto 2019; Wild was the night, Institut d'Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne 2019; A puzzling light and moving, lumber room, Portland, Oregon 2019; I can't nail the days down, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna 2018; and All the stuff you already know, The Sunday Painter, London 2018. She has been included in recent group exhibitions at Fondation d'entreprise Hermès, Tokyo, Japan 2024: Madragoa, Lisbon, Portugal 2023; Cooper Cole, Toronto, Canada, 2023; Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, France 2023; Michael Lett, Auckland, New Zealand 2022; Moly-Sabata, Sablons, France 2022; Artpace, San Antonio, TX, USA 2022 Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France 2022; Musée d'art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, Rochechouart, France 2021; 21st Biennale of Sydney, Australia 2018; Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany 2018; and SculptureCenter, NY, USA 2017, among others. In 2012, she won the Walters Prize, New Zealand’s largest contemporary art prize, and in 2019 Newby was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant. Newby was recently awarded the 13th edition of the Ettore e Ines Fico Prize at Artissima 2022. Kate has undertaken residencies at The Chinati Foundation (2017), Artpace (2017), Fogo Island (2013), and the International Studio & Curatorial Program ISCP (2012).