Works on Paper 2021
Curated by Davina Barber & Laura Lopes
For many years the work of Kate Giles has focused on a keen and intimate vision of the landscape of her native East Anglia. Intensive drawing on the spot is the groundwork for all later work painted in the studio. The drawings shown here are a vital initial response to the seized moment: low winter sun fitfully illuminates the bright red of cotoneaster berries and the beguiling sturdiness of a colony of beehives against the gold staccato notation of hazel catkins; the dark scribble of bough and branch. Another charcoal work and two monotypes have apple and hawthorn: a counterpoint weathering in an old and familiar orchard not far from King’s Lynn. Two small oilstick drawings are of light scudding over Ravonstonedale to the north of the Howgills in Cumbria.
Kate Giles grey up in Norwich. Having read English at Oxford she trained at Camberwell and Falmouth Schools of Art. She has exhibited regularly ever since, particularly in London and East Anglia but also internationally. Her work can be found in numerous public and private collections in the UK and abroad (e.g. The Britten Pears Foundation, Aviva, Banco Sabadell). Exhibitions have arisen from a variety of residencies and commissions (e.g. The National Theatre, The Whitechapel, Bell Foundry, The Kazan Cathedral, St Petersburg).
Her work was hung alongside that of Constable, Turner, Creffield and Kossoff at the Salisbury Museum 2016-17 (‘Constable in context: Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows in perspective’).