Kate McDonnell Somerset, United Kingdom

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I am an installation artist based in Bath, UK.

My work provokes feelings first rather than thoughts – a tacit, visceral form of communication. I focus on the physical sensations of uncomfortable emotions, translating them into physical actions that I can apply to materials. It’s is a compulsive process of agitated redacting, crushing, twisting, scribbling and binding. Each work is a collection of the remnants of these processes. An ongoing theme in my work is creating scale through repetition and my artworks often become feats of endurance played out over time.

Finding the right medium is important. Alongside using work-a-day materials like paper, ballpoint pens, marker pens and wax crayons, I’ll often employ ubiquitous found objects such as empty bottles, till receipts, newspapers, old bedlinens and used greetings cards – things that hold an embodied memory. In so doing I’ve made works reflecting on alcohol, insomnia, anxiety, isolation, loneliness and difficult family relationships.

I hope that people recognise something of their own experiences in my work. I find great resonance in Doris Lessing’s observation in The Golden Notebook that ‘I’m scared of being alone in what I feel.’ Even as a child my first instinct to life events was to pick up a pencil and try to show how I felt, often to the bafflement of others. Artistic action was my first language and remains so today.

I’m an installation artist based in Bath, UK. I graduated from my MFA at Bath Spa in 2018 and I’ve been building my practice ever since. Last year I was part of the Slipping the Veil at St Bartholomew the Great, London and created a large installation at Bethlem Museum of the Mind. In 2024 I had two solo exhibitions, Nocturne and Testbed 24, both in Bath. Previously, I had a solo show at The Art House, Wakefield, and group exhibitions at Wells and Chichester Cathedrals, Maximillian Wölfgang in London, and the RWA in Bristol. My accolades include the Gilbert Bayes Award, shortlistings for the John Ruskin and New Emergence Art Prizes, longlisting for the Aesthetica Art Prize, and I was named an Artist to Watch by ArtConnect. I gained a distinction for my MFA (Bath Spa University, 2018) and previously achieved an MA in Design Studies (Central St. Martins) and a BA in Design Management (De Montfort University).