Katie West

Katie West’s practice is defined by experiments in a 'custodial ethic', as termed by Murri academic Mary Graham, grounded in the understanding that the health of human society and Country mirror one another. Her installations, textile pieces, and happenings invite attention to the ways we weave our histories, places, and more-than-human kinships.

West is showing as part travelling exhibition ‘Pliable Planes: Expanded Textiles & Fibre Practices’ currently at LaTrobe Art Institute until 12 May 2024. In 2023, West was a ‘Ramsay Art Prize’ finalist, presented at ‘The National 4’, Sydney, and in the USA as part of the Independent Curators International (ICI) supported touring exhibition, ‘Actions for the Earth’, curated by Sharmila Wood.

In 2022, West presented the solo exhibition ‘We Hold You Close’, with curator Eloise Sweetman, at PICA for the Perth Festival and participated in group exhibitions ‘Primavera 2022: Young Australian Artists’, MCA, Sydney and ‘Tracks We Share: Contemporary Art of the Pilbara’, produced by FORM and presented at AGWA.

West studied Visual Art at Edith Cowan University, 2009 and Sociology at Murdoch University, 2013. In 2017 she 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.

In this video, West chats to NAVA about understanding what kind of work is important and the deep concern for the environment, climate change and overconsumption, the importance of new perspectives and circling back to old ideas, and the therapeutic placement of art as a sense of learning her own familial histories. 

Transcript.

Video production by Atypical 2023.

Above image: Katie West at Cossack, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and FORM Building a State of Creativity. Photo by Peacock Visuals.

ID: A photo of artist, Katie West carrying a bundle of long sticks on an empty beach at dusk.