KATE HOWE: PORTFOLIO
‘The First Twenty-Four Hours (Part One)’
Kate Howe, 2024, oil on linen. 160cm x 120cm.
This work is a direct response to Howe’s current research proposal.
“So something really special has happened: I'm now looking straight at these memories with curiosity, like a detective. I knew as I approached the subject of collecting rape in art, and as I sat in front of exquisite images of rape in the National Gallery, that there was a lifetime of work to do here because my experience is not unique. Stories of rape pervade society and always have: they are instructional, and they help the genders understand their social positions, and the dangers inherent to those positions...”
- Excerpts from Kate Howe’s writing. Read more here.
'The First Twenty-Four Hours (Part One)’ , Kate Howe, 2024, Detail View.
‘The First Twenty-Four Hours (Part One)’, Kate Howe, 2024, oil on linen. 160cm x 120cm. Installation View.
‘The First Twenty-Four Hours (Part Two)’
Kate Howe, 2024, oil on linen. 160cm x 120cm.
This work is a direct response to writing Howe’s current research proposal.
“Across my studio are strewn reference paintings of rapes, of wars, of soldiery, of horses storming gates, and massacres of innocents. These pieces we all know so well, the majority from Rubens and Titian, pieces I've stared at in person in the Wallace Collection and the National Gallery, informed my mark making, rather than obliterating the loving image I'd painted below, I felt an act of liberating, of joining my memory - of it joining hands with the marks which have entered my lexicon from so much looking…”
- Excerpts from Kate Howe’s writing. Read more here.
'The First Twenty-Four Hours (Part Two)’ , Kate Howe, 2024, Detail View.
‘The First Twenty-Four Hours (Part Two)’, Kate Howe, 2024, oil on linen. 160cm x 120cm. Installation View.
‘Instructions to the Other from the Mother’
Kate Howe, 2023, Site-specific Installation at RuptureXIBIT for ‘Lawless Imagination’, waxed kraft paper, lights, wire, bin bags.
“In some relationship to the non-binary creatures of the Erotics of Power series, these beings enfleshed in the deep space of the black box theater in RuptureXIBIT. Maybe related, all of them bear a streak of blue. Are they communicating? Are the smaller ones attacking the bigger one? What is the relationship here? Some seem subverting, of shape, of pattern, of behavior. I’m not entirely sure they like being imprinted upon.
I was thinking a lot about the generational policing of women’s bodies, toxic lessons handed down from the position of benevolent sexism, a deeply baked in bias we brush into our daughter’s hair at night. I was thinking about these acts of care, these acts of teaching, these lines of safety, security, and performity we transmit, the safety they seem to offer, the blind we are in as we receive them, the way they smear like lipstick if you do something you aughtn’t. The stain they leave.”
-Kate Howe on this piece and performance ‘Fidelity loss Inevitable’.
‘Instructions to the Other from the Mother’, Kate Howe Site-specific installation as part of ‘Lawless Imagination’ at RuptureXIBIT, December 2023. Installation shot.
‘Instructions to the Other from the Mother’, Kate Howe, Site-specific installation as part of ‘Lawless Imagination’ at RuptureXIBIT, December 2023. Installation shot.
‘Fidelity Loss Inevitable’
Kate Howe, 2023, Site-specific Butoh performance inside Howe’s installation ‘Instructions to the Other…’ to Nick Parking’s Island of Dust during group show ‘Lawless Imagination’ at RuptureXIBIT on 9th December 2023.
“In some relationship to the non-binary creatures of the Erotics of Power series, these beings enfleshed in the deep space of the black box theater in RuptureXIBIT. Maybe related, all of them bear a streak of blue. Are they communicating? Are the smaller ones attacking the bigger one? What is the relationship here? Some seem subverting, of shape, of pattern, of behavior. I’m not entirely sure they like being imprinted upon.
I was thinking a lot about the generational policing of women’s bodies, toxic lessons handed down from the position of benevolent sexism, a deeply baked in bias we brush into our daughter’s hair at night. I was thinking about these acts of care, these acts of teaching, these lines of safety, security, and performity we transmit, the safety they seem to offer, the blind we are in as we receive them, the way they smear like lipstick if you do something you aughtn’t. The stain they leave.”
-Kate Howe on this performance.
‘Fidelity loss Inevitable’. Kate Howe performs Butoh inside their installation ‘Instructions to the Other…’ to Nick Parking’s Island of Dust during the group show ‘Lawless Imagination’ at RuptureXIBIT on 9th December 2023.
‘The Infinite Intimate’, Kate Howe, 2023, Detail view.
‘The Infinite Intimate’
Kate Howe, 2023, Site-Specific Installation for ‘Light Being’ at Lychee Gallery. Kraft paper and stitching. 6.8 m x 3.7 m. Hands: Olivia England, Tom Wight.
‘The Infinite Intimate’ is a site-specific installation in Lychee One gallery, as part of the Wild Parlour Philosophy Collective’s group show ‘Light Being’, curated by Johnathan Miles. PDF Catalogue linked here.
“Infinite. Intimate. A delicate mode of dissolution, the impetus of which sends us hurtling into the never-ending expanse of consciousness. It is the warmth of your breath against my ear as you confess; it is the secret I hold back even from myself and think I will never tell.
Not impossible, but unlikely. Not a paradox, a new truth: a sequence of polemic doubles disavowing fixed identities and, with this, modes of binary logic...”
-Excerpts of Kate Howe’s writing ‘Infinite Intimate’. Read more.
‘The Infinite Intimate’, Kate Howe, 2023. Installation shot.
‘The Templum’
Kate Howe and Jessica Mardon. 2023, kraft paper, stitching, gold leaf, dust from the cave of the Oracle at Delphi, 15 minute immersive sound piece, 15 minutes of silence. Site for silent hours, readings, performances, dis- cussions, talks and transformations. Variable dimensions, site-specific installation for the Wild Parlour: Alternative Airport at RuptureXIBIT, London. Hands: Olivia England, Sally Minns, Sadie Wight, Tom Wight, Sylvia Flateau, Flo McCarthy, Leon Watts.
‘The Templum’ is a site-specific installation as part of the Wild Parlour Philosophy Collective’s group show ‘Alternative Airport’ at RuptureXIBIT, May 2023. The show featured the work of recent graduates and current students of the Royal College of Art. The Wild Parlour Philosophy Collective is led by painter and writer Jonathan Miles (PhD advisor at RCA). ‘The Templum’ functioned as a site for performance, spoken word and sound work throughout the show. Templum PDF Catalogue linked here.
“This must be experienced in person. Photographs don’t at all do it justice - the immersion, the feeling of warmth, of vastness, of infinite, confounded space - but it’s everything Mike Nelson wasn’t for me - it’s not so direct, but it holds you as it unfolds and you find yourself lost. I am just amazed. I hope lots of people get to experience this in person before it comes down. It is just very, very special in person.” - KH, studio visitor, curator.
‘The Templum’, Kate Howe and Jessica Mardon, Site-specific installation as part of ‘Alternative Airport’ at RuptureXIBIT, May 2023. Installation shot.
‘The Templum’, Kate Howe and Jessica Mardon, Site-specific installation as part of ‘Alternative Airport’ at RuptureXIBIT, May 2023. Installation shot.
“In this space [the Templum], there’s an extraordinary birth of passion, you have to have a passion to make a work like this. Its sound currents... it speaks of both memory and oblivion at the same time, a meeting point between memory and oblivion. Also, a way of remembering the great silence of which we come out of and go back into...”
-Excerpts of Jonathan Miles’ talk inside ‘the Templum’.
‘CONTACT’ Social Performance inside the ‘Templum’, at RuptureXIBIT, 6th May 2023.
‘Susanna's howling liver, delivered unto the Organ of Healing’
Kate Howe, 2023, waxed kraft paper, stitching, lights, Divine and Memory Totemics, rocks bones and stones from the river Thames, hand hammered brass bowl, tealights, cushions. Site-specific installation: the Crypt Gallery, St. Pancras. Variable dimensions. Hands: Sylvia Flatau, Sadie Wight, Ellen Wight, Tom Wight, Sharon Owenga, Olivia England, Ben Coleman, Guy Shoham.
This site-specific installation was made as part of group show ‘Subterranean Organ’, curated by Daisy Wang and Celeste Viv Ly, at the Crypt Gallery, Euston, April 2023. The exhibition inquires into the interiority and exteriority of the more-than-human body, in relation to fluidity, contingency, and the architectural and performative spaces within and without. PDF Catalogue linked here.
"This site-specific installation was the beginning of the Intimacies, of the internal landscapes, shared secrets, whispered truths and warped and woven lies that form the typography of spoken work…” read more.
‘Susanna's howling liver, delivered unto the Organ of Healing’, Kate Howe, 2023. Installation shot.
‘Transmission’
Site-specific performance in Susanna’s howling liver, delivered unto the Organ of Healing’, 2023, kraft paper, stitching, lights, Divine and Memory Totemics, site-specific installation. Variable dimensions. Kate Howe, 2023. Hands: Sylvia Flatau, Sadie Wight, Ellen Wight, Tom Wight, Sharon Owenga, Olivia England, Ben Coleman, Guy Shoham. Performers:Janet McCunn, Lizzie Cardozo, Garance Paule Querleu, Alexa Chow, Olivia England , Doireann Gillan.
‘Supernova is Sad’
Kate Howe read ‘Supernova is Sad’ in their site-specific installation ‘Susanna’s howling liver…’ at the Crypt Gallery, April 2023. A closing reading performance of recent writings, these pieces are intimate personal reflections, the writing of which is often a necessary part of Howe’s practice.
‘Transmission’ performance and fly-through of ‘Susanna’s Howling Liver…’, Kate Howe, 2023.
‘Final Feeding’ (Performance)
Spontaneous performance inside a WIP installation at RuptureXIBIT. 9 June, 2023. Duration: 75 minutes. Seated meditation whilst receiving an IV for pancreatitis, nude in a nest of Kraft paper, attached to a creature via surgical tubing. Nurse: Sharon Owenga (Photo: Sharon Owenga, street view through the High street shop-front window).
“No where in this litany of how I should be’s is any room for how I might be, and I had to be led to the edge of freedom by my own two transgender daughters. My work knew I was queer long before I was brave enough to agree with it. This work lives at the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, and ableism…” Read more.
‘Final Feeding’, Kate Howe, 2023. Installation view,
‘Final Feeding’
Kate Howe, 2023, kraft paper, aluminum wire, tar, shellac and stitching.
“She’s too big
lifting, never rising, she pushes, folds, opens,
and is closed
Grotesque; she should not be conceived in a box like this; it doesn’t feel ethical to press her ragged wings against the walls
Sew her shut and drag those limbs, strong as silk,
Through the tar
she knows she will not live
but she will fight for every moment inside this box
or breaking it, die anyway.
“I proved it to myself yesterday.” she wrote six years ago in a note she left for me.
“If I fight, I WIN.”
I hear you, dead and arisen through
Sysiphisian baptisms of catastrophic
Female malaise.
You died anyway, I whisper, as I hold her to my chest, encircle her with arms, alive once again, but no longer hers.
My wing hits the window.”
- Kate Howe
‘Final Feeding’ (Performance), Spontaneous performance inside a WIP installation at RuptureXIBIT. 9 June, 2023. Duration: 75 minutes. Seated meditation whilst receiving an IV for pancreatitis, nude in a nest of Kraft paper, attached to a creature via surgical tubing. Nurse: Sharon Owenga (Photo: Sharon Owenga, street view through the High street shop-front window). 3 Minute Version.
‘I broke into your garden…’, Kate Howe, Studio Shot.
‘I broke into your garden today and wrote you a letter from the bench under your window.’
Kate Howe, 2021, oil paint and oil pastel on canvas, 200 x 200 cm.
“But Turner pulled me into the vortex. And held me there, breathless, lashed to the mast against him as the storm raged all around us. I sat down in front of Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth - originally exhibited in 1842 - and I didn’t leave for nearly four hours”.
‘I felt it brush…’, Kate Howe, Installation Shot.
‘I felt it brush my forearms as it fell, keeps falling, over and over. The sun, I notice, is very blue, coming through the leaves.’ (After Gentileschi with Memory totemic)
Kate Howe, 2022, installation, oil paint and stitching on Kraft paper in black surround with lights and Memory totemic, variable dimensions.
“As I discovered the thousands of versions of Susanna and the Elders carved, painted, stitched, and drawn between 1250 and 1850, I began to print them out and tape them to my studio wall. After a while, my wall looked less and less like a collection of exquisite historical paintings and more and more like the wall of a serial rapist collecting photos of their crimes.
I could not escape the collective trauma in each one of these images and began to recognize the clues linking these cold cases together. The same items were appearing across the centuries: the bench, the cloth, the pool, the oak tree, the mastic tree, the elders, Susanna, the hand shushing, the hand pointing to god…”- Excerpts from Howe’s writing on the Susanna series.
‘I felt it brush…’, Kate Howe, Detail Shot.