Bio
Art and poetry have always been a part of Kate Gorney’s life. Her parents, a published poet and a former priest and philosopher, had a huge impact on the way she sees the world. Kate’s artistic path began with a childhood spent in the country on a horse farm in rural Michigan where she was inspired by her surroundings. Sketching, drawing, and making her own objects was a way of capturing pieces of an ever changing landscape. She trained as a classical ballet dancer, attended a program for Women in the Arts at the George Washington University and spent time abroad in Finland and Italy studying art and culture before moving to New York City where she lives and works. Exhibitions include Once Broken installed in a private location in Greenwhich Village with a corresponding artist’s talk at Affirmation Arts Gallery, and most recently Archipelago with Parcours de l’Art contemporary Art festival in Avignon France.
Artist Statement
I am a mixed-media installation artist who creates multi-sensory immersive environments. These installations culminate as a multi-media space that engages ideas of the ephemeral versus the eternal, while creating atmospheres of meditation with an air of transience. Rooms are developed as multi-sensory three-dimensional settings for poetic verse that feel both universal and personal at once.
The work seeks to transform poetry into lingering encompassing experiences that speak to the collective subconscious through an exploration of the intensely personal.
Working with arrangement of material and objects, both made and found, memories are conjured, rooms imbued rooms with meaning, and representational journeys mapped. The subtlety of space and expression are carefully considered. Pieces are conceived of as tools to address social narrative. Viewers are encouraged to engage with various vessels of memory, as themes are excavated.
Through collection and assemblage, objects themselves are considered and re-contextualized. Hi-lighting both our relationship to them and their inherent value, while questioning the meanings we infuse.
Elements of scent, sound design and video are integral parts of each installation.
Some topics addressed are ideas of change and loss, desire, wabi-sabi, trauma, and surreality in domestic life.
