Kate Newby, ‘Let me be the wind that pulls your hair’, 2017, Exhibition view (detail), Artpace, San Antonio, TX, USA 
Kate Newby, ‘I can’t nail the days down’, 2018. Exhibition detail, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria 
Kate Newby, ‘I can’t nail the days down’, 2018. Exhibition detail, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria 
Kate Newby, ’Sorry fingers keep going’, 2018. White brass, porcelain, silver, brass, stoneware and glaze, 8 pieces 
Kate Newby, ’lit by lightning’, 2019. Glass, Two parts, 9.4 x 18 x 29cm, 8.8 x 20 x 11.5cm 
Kate Newby, ’Bring Everyone’, 2019. Glass, Dimensions vary according to site 
Kate Newby, ‘The more I listen to it the more I love it’, 2017. Glass, beer bottles Exhibition detail, Contemporary Swedish Art Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden 
Kate Newby, ‘Not this time, not for me’, 2017. Mortar, concrete colour, silver, white brass, porcelain, cotton rope, glass, stoneware. Exhibition detail, SculptureCenter, New York, NY, USA 
Kate Newby, ‘Let me be the wind that pulls your hair’, 2017. Exhibition detail, Artpace, San Antonio, TX, USA 
Kate Newby, ‘A rock in this pocket’, 2018. Bricks, glass, ceramics, metal Exhibition view, 21st Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia 
Biography
Kate Newby was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1979 and works in the United States where she lives. In 2015, she graduated with a PhD from the Elam School of Fine Art at the University of Auckland.
Kate Newby creates sculptures and installations using a variety of media including ceramics, glass and textiles. By incorporating discarded everyday objects (cigarette butts, coins, broken glass), she magnifies the prosaic by giving it new form and space, from the minuscule to the monumental. Her interventions are unique and site-specific, playing with their luminosity, their spatiality and their original use. The artist interferes in these places with handmade works, transforming raw materials into bricks, candlesticks or windows and invites the spectators to come closer to better (re)discover their textures and details.
Her work has been shown at the 21st Biennale of Sydney in 2018, as well as in various institutions and galleries around the world: at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Villeurbane (2019), Kunsthalle Vienna (2018) and Index, Contemporary Swedish Art Foundation (2017). In 2012 she won the Walters Prize, New Zealand’s largest contemporary art prize.
At the gallery
- Indus 2, Group show, 2019
- Try doing anything without it, solo show, 2022