Katie West is an interdisciplinary artist and Yindjibarndi woman of the Pilbara Tablelands, with a strong sense of home in Noongar Boodja. The process and notion of naturally dyeing fabric underpin her practice – the rhythm of walking, gathering, bundling, boiling up water and infusing materials with plant matter. Katie creates objects, installations and happenings, that invite attention to the ways we weave our stories, places, histories and futures. Katie’s first significant commission Decolonist, for Next Wave Festival 2016, explored how meditation is a way to decolonise the self. In 2017 Katie completed a Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, graduating as the recipient of the Dominik Mersch Gallery Award and the Falls Creek Resort Indigenous Award. Other selected exhibitions include: A Biography of Daphne, ACCA, Melbourne VIC; Radical Ecologies, PICA, Perth WA; Roll on, Roll on, Phenomena (until you are no more), curated by Eloise Sweetman, Jan van Eyck Academy, The Netherlands; Warna (ground), Caves Gallery, Melbourne VIC; wilayi bangarrii, wanyaarri (go for a walk, listen), Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney NSW; Installation Contemporary, Sydney Contemporary 2019, Carriageworks, Sydney NSW; Clearing, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville VIC. Katie also shares a collaborative project with artist and writer Fayen d’Evie entitled Museum Incognita. Sparked by asking what forms a decolonised museum may take, Museum Incognita revisits neglected, concealed or obscured histories and activates embodied readings of place. Exhibitions and residencies for the Museum Incognita project include: Marrgu Residency, Durrmu Arts & Agency Projects; When the other meets the other, curated by Biljana Ciric, Cultural Centre of Belgrade, Serbia; Summer Residency: Museum Incognita, Blindside, Melbourne VIC; A thousand times the rolling sun, curated by Gabriel Curtin, HM Prison, Beechworth, VIC; and the University of Melbourne’s Department of Geography Artist in Residence Program.
Katie West
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West Hartford, USA
Cape Town, South Africa
Skopje, Macedonia
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Quito, Ecuador
Dublin, Ireland
Göteborg, Sweden
Tirana, Albania
Tirana, Albania
Lagos, Nigeria
Lagos, Nigeria
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Sioux Falls, USA
Greenfield, USA
New Orleans, LA, USA
Conway, USA
Taipei, Taiwan
Storrs, USA
Indianapolis, USA
Springfield, MA, USA
New York, NY, USA
Portland, ME, USA
Fitzroy, Australia
Wooster, USA
London, England, UK
East Jerusalem
Berlin, Germany
Biel, Switzerland
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Raleigh, USA
Greencastle, IN, USA
Calgary, Canada
Dakar, Senegal
Moscow, Russia