Biography

Kate Newby was born in Auckland, Aotearoa, 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.

Working with a variety of media including installation, textile, ceramics, casting and glass, Newby is a sculptor who is committed to exploring and putting pressure on the limits and nature of sculpture. As such, she is interested in not only space, volume, texture and materials, but where and how sculpture happens. Consisting of site-specific projets that form relationships with locations througt actions, Kate Newby’s work engages with a wide range of situations using everyday actions and materials in order to displace and challenge how contemporary art is exhibited, viewed, and archived.

Her work has been shown at the 21st Biennale of Sydney in 2018, as well as in various institutions and galleries around the world: Sharjah Bienniale (2025), Fondation Hermès and Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan (2023/2024), at Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, Texas, US (2023), Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand, Wellington, Nouvelle-Zélande (2023); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022); Musée de Rochechouart (2021); Institut d’Art Contemporain Villeurbane (2019); Lumber room, Portland, Oregon (2019); Kunsthalle Vienna (2018); Kunsthaus Hamburg (2018); Index, Contemporary Swedish Art Foundation (2017); and the SculptureCenter, NY (2017).

Kate has completed residencies at: The Joan Mitchell Foundation (2019), The Chinati Foundation (2017), Artpace (2017), Fogo Island (2013), and the International Studio & Curatorial Program ISCP (2012).

She won the Walters Prize, New Zealand’s largest contemporary art prize, in 2012 and the Ettore Fico Prize (Turin, IT) in 2022.

At the gallery

• Try doing anything without it, solo show, 2022
• Indus 2, Group show, 2019

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Catalogues