Kate Gottgens, Her Glittering Embrace, 2023

Kate Gottgens

B. South Africa, 1965

South African painter Kate Gottgens builds her compositions from multiple vernacular sources. Her practice explores the fraught environment of suburbia and the contemporary moment.

Highlights

Huxley-Parlour KATE GOTTGENS Huxley-Parlour Maddox Street
1

Kate Gottgens: A String of Signs. Installation View

Kate Gottgens, Bare Bones, Installation View
2

Kate Gottgens. Bare Bones (2023)

Huxley-Parlour, 45 Maddox Street, September 2023, Kate Gottgens A String of Signs, Exhibition View
3

Kate Gottgens: A String of Signs. Installation View

The Works

9

1

Kate Gottgens

Mise-en-Scène

2024

Oil on canvas

2

Kate Gottgens

Late Summer

2024

Oil on canvas

3

Kate Gottgens

Suburban Erotic

2023

Oil on canvas

4

Kate Gottgens

A Lost Summer

2023

Oil on canvas

5

Kate Gottgens

Little White Cat

2023

Oil on canvas

6

Kate Gottgens

Her Glittering Embrace

2023

Monotype

7

Kate Gottgens

Night Expanding

2023

Monotype

8

Kate Gottgens

Holding Back a Lake

2023

Monotype

9

Kate Gottgens

Figures at a Pool

2023

Monotype

Kate Gottgens

B. South Africa1965

Kate Gottgens Huxley-Parlour

B. South Africa1965

Biography

Kate Gottgens’ paintings interrupt the visual language of suburban leisure. She uses amalgamations of commonplace home photography to construct indistinct scenes which hold ambiguous and open-ended narratives.  Built from multiple de-contextualised images, the figures reject specification in time and location. Gottgens’ artistic practice exorcises the malaise that stems from the superficiality of suburban life to reveal something ‘off-kilter and menacing.’ Gottgens understands ‘entropy and collapse’ to be central to the contemporary experience and her work describes a transient world where more is suggested than initially seen. 

Gottgens was born in Durban, South Africa in 1965. She graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 1987. Her first solo exhibition, Modern Wonders, was held at Everard Read Contemporary Gallery, Johannesburg in 1993, while her international solo debut Savage Nature was shown at Espacio Liquido in Gijon, Spain in 2014. The same year her work was included in a group exhibition at One Art Space, New York. Since then she has presented five solo exhibitions across South Africa as well as in NUNC Contemporary Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. In 2019, she exhibited work at the Ampersand Foundation Award 21 years celebration exhibition, curated by Gordon Froud. In 2021, Gottgens was featured in a group exhibition I have Made a Place, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa, and another group exhibition in 2023, Licked by the Waves, New Bathers in Art, Museum More, Gorssel, Netherlands. In 2014, Gottgens was the only South African artist to be selected for the Thames & Hudson publication 100 Painters of Tomorrow. In 2015, SMAC Gallery published the book Kate Gottgens // Paintings 2007 – 2015. The second book dedicated to her work, entitled Gottgens // Paintings 2015 – 2017, was published in 2017. In his 2017 book, In the World: Essays on Contemporary South African Art, the cultural theorist Ashraf Jamal dedicated a chapter to Gottgens’ work. Her work is held in many prestigious collections including the South African Broadcasting Corporation Collection in Johannesburg. Gottgens lives and works in Cape Town.

Discover

2

Exhibitions

1

Huxley-Parlour Kate Gottgens 45 Maddox Street Exhibition Autumn 2023

Kate Gottgens: A String of Signs

21.9 - 21.102023

Closed

By continuing to use this site you consent with our cookie policy. You can read more here.

Enquire

Please enter your email address and a member of our sales team will contact you with more information

Thank you for your enquiry. We will be in touch shortly.