Kathryn Kenworth
Instagram: @kathrynkenworth
Website: https://www.kathrynkenworth.com
Bio: Kathryn Kenworth makes work that explores the social, emotional, and cultural meanings embedded in everyday objects. Kathryn received a BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder CO (1989) and MFA from Mills College, Oakland, CA (1999).
Her work has been exhibited in the US and internationally in galleries, museums, universities, parking lots and storefront windows including Southern Exposure Gallery, Kala Art Institute, Bedford Gallery and the David Brower Center as well as in France, Australia and Mexico. She has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the Awesome Foundation, and Théâtre à l´envers, Rennes FRANCE among others. Her residencies include the MacDowell Colony, Bundanon (Australia), Au Bout du Plongeoir (France), Foundation House, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She lives and works in Oakland, California.
Statement: I use everyday items such as face cream, aspirin, duct tape and sponges as points of departure to investigate how advertising, desire, consumerism, and ideas of value shape our relationships with the things that surround us. Changing context, scale, and material, transforms ordinary items in unexpected ways and encourages new perspectives on everyday life.
Working in a variety of media, I choose materials for the qualities and associations they carry. Charcoal gets smudged in the process of making, leaving traces of touch on the page that personalizes mass-produced objects and shifts how we see them. Paint moves between control and unpredictability, flowing across surfaces to create tension between what is contained and what escapes. Found objects, packaging, and reused materials are combined to create new relationships between what we are encouraged to want and what we choose to keep, need, and value.
