Kate Newby

Critical text

Kate Newby’s (b. 1979, Aotearoa) site-responsive work is often embedded within the spaces in which she shows, be that an exhibition or an architectural intervention. Underpinning this process is a performative ethos: she investigates the way materials respond to a site’s particular temporal, physical, and geographical conditions as a means of transformation. The distinctly handmade quality of her sculptural interventions simultaneously connects and contrasts with the surroundings of their built-up environments. Drawing out both the physical and poetic qualities of materials, such as concrete, textiles, glass, and ceramic, her work explores whether materiality and content can be just as informative as a situational context.

Text by Saim Demircan, Maurin Dietrich