Kate Newby

COOPER COLE is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Kate Newby. This marks Newby’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

This Is How We Do
(A Never-Ending Text, For Kate’s Exhibition, Starting Today, Thursday, Added To, Maybe Tomorrow, Or More Like The Day After)

All of these lines bring softness, not lines like any others we march to, wait for, complain about:

bus lines,
border lines,
hair lines,
time lines.

We end up seeing most of our lives from ‘em, thinking our best thoughts, wearing our fleece bottoms, making toast, stumbling, toing and froing, as if our rented spaces, with the potted plants, would bring us closer, but will always be, the width of a train car, jostling us slightly, as we groan and inch out through industrial spaces, like this one, and like that one, on our way to work, or is our work, eventually to become the next place to live (it’s all living, right?) these spaces existing because of our need for wood of certain lengths, (you… yes you…) dimensions, styles, pallets of cheddar cheese and Huggies Little Movers Jean Diapers.

“eXistenZ,” I overheard a young woman say, in a converted industrial space that had been turned into a coffee shop called, Grit one day while I was visiting Toronto.

What do we see of worlds like this? Moving out like this?

We are placed within a radius of vision, a moving circle, of lines drawn, and then redrawn, further out then a stone’s throw. A placement, an egg cracked into a cast-iron skillet, the space at the top of the glass and not the bottom, nothing like the bottom! the shape of sound as seen from above, a paint can lid cracked open, like a nut, we see the fruit for the first time, still color, fresh will, the wall’s will, a room without geometry fits as liquid in a can.

Why toss, why stumble, why bunch, wrinkle and pile up?

Why a machine to force out the dirt of our lives? (said with emotion) Why lint, why the smell of fruit poured into those noise-generating-liquid-scrawlers, the lucky machines, is what my Nana called them. ‘Let’s move ’em out!’ she shouted while loading them, less we scrub and scrub our clothes on rocks by the river, like so many do? On rocks by the river like so many DON’T, I thought at age twelve.

On rocks by the river. The Washington Post has called it ‘a magical artifact, a kind of time capsule with the power to transport readers to another era.”

Throwing a rock into a river is like yelling “DONUT FUCKERS” in a bakery, “it was written in the press release” (said Paul)

No? Not really, I thought, not like throwing a rock into a river, yelling.

Not a rock, but something like a rock, a stone, but more a gesture, like at the end of a movie, or like a golf swing, our eyes lift up from the protagonist, peeled away by a particular camera shot, we watch the main character blend, then disappear into a crowd.

Amen. (splunk) 

– Geoffrey Farmer

An ongoing text.
Invited by Kate Newby as a part of  her exhibition Nothing in my life feels big enough.

Kate Newby (b. 1979, Auckland, New Zealand) works with installation, textile, ceramics, casting and glass. Her work explores the limits and nature of sculpture, not only in space but also where and how sculpture happens. In 2012 she was awarded the renowned Walter’s Prize. Newby graduated with a Doctor of Fine Arts (2015) from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts. Recent solo shows include Otium #4, IAC, Villeurbanne, France (2019); A puzzling light and moving., The Lumber Room, Portland, USA (2019), Nothing that’s over so soon should give you that much strength, Hordaland kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway (2018), All the stuff you already know, The Sunday Painter, London, United Kingdom (2018), I can’t nail the days down, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (2018), Swift little verbs pushing the big nouns around, Michael Lett, Auckland, New Zealand (2018); Let me be the wind that pulls your hair, Artpace, San Antonio, USA (2017); The January February March, The Poor Farm, Wisconsin, USA (2016); I memorized it I loved it so much, Laurel Gitlen, New York, USA (2015): Two aspirins a vitamin C tablet and some baking soda, Laurel Doody, Los Angeles, USA (2015); I feel like a truck on a wet highway, Lulu, Mexico City, Mexico (2014); Maybe I won‘t go to sleep at all., La Loge, Brussels, Belgium (2013); and Let the other thing in, Fogo Island Gallery, Newfoundland, Canada (2013); among others. Her works have also been shown in international group exhibitions, including Notebook, 56 Henry, New York, USA (2019), Further Thoughts on Earthy Materials, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Germany, (2018); 21st Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2018); Scrap Metal, Toronto. Canada (2017); Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden (2017); Sculpture Center, New York, USA (2017); Casa del Lago, Mexico City, Mexico (2015); Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Auckland, New Zealand (2015); and Arnolfini, Bristol, United Kingdom (2014). Newby undertook residencies at The Chinati Foundation, Marfa (2017), Artpace, San Antonio, USA (2017) and Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada (2013). Newby currently lives and works between Auckland, New Zealand and Brooklyn, USA.

We would like to acknowledge the generous exhibition support of Laura Kukkee and the ceramics department at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario.