CuratorSpace Artist Bursary #35: Kate McDonnell

Kate McDonnell is an installation artist based in Bath, UK. Through processes of crushing, twisting, redacting, scribbling and binding, she transforms feelings into physical forms. Using everyday materials and found objects that carry traces of lived experience, she creates works that explore anxiety, insomnia, loneliness, isolation and complex family relationships.

For her bursary project, Nineteen Years, Kate will develop a new body of work examining her experience of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). PMDD is a severe and widely misunderstood condition that can cause debilitating mental, physical and emotional symptoms during the menstrual cycle. After receiving treatment for bipolar disorder for fifteen years, Kate discovered she had PMDD when her symptoms disappeared following hormone replacement therapy for perimenopause. The project represents the nineteen years lost to misdiagnosis in the form of a memorial.

The bursary also supports a significant shift in Kate's practice. Known for large-scale installations, she is now working with oil paint for the first time. Through experimentation with surface, material and gesture, she will explore how painting can embody grief, rage, loss. Treating the painted surface as a sculptural object, she aims to develop a new visual language that brings these experiences into view. Alongside building technical knowledge of oil painting, Kate will use the bursary to test materials, techniques and processes that support this new direction. The project marks the beginning of a longer-term series of large-scale paintings that address the realities of PMDD to challenge the stigma surrounding the condition, and give form to experiences that are too often overlooked.

Since completing her MFA at Bath Spa University in 2018, Kate has exhibited widely across the UK, including solo exhibitions in Bath and Wakefield and installations at Bethlem Museum of the Mind and St Bartholomew the Great, London. Her recent achievements include being selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, receiving the Gilbert Bayes Award, being longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize and shortlisted for the John Ruskin Art Prize and New Emergence Art Prizes.

You can find out more about the CuratorSpace Artist Bursary and how to apply at bursary.curatorspace.com.

Image credit: Kate McDonnell, 6594 Lost Days (detail), Oil, acrylic, pencil on paper, 2026

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