Kate Valentine

About the artist

Classic headshot of artist Kate Valentine in her studio. She is seated at a glass table surrounded by artwork, her notebook and tablet. She is casually dressed in a fluffy jumper and is looking directly at the camera

Kate Valentine is a painter and printmaker from Aotearoa, now living and working on Gayamaygal Country near Manly, NSW. Valentine’s practice has three persistent themes: flora and landscape exploring place, identity and relationship to country; pop inspired works investigating gender expression in consumer culture; and contemporary portraiture.

Inspired by a recent move to Gayamaygal country near the NSW coast, the Bright Paradise collection documents the native and introduced flora in the artist’s local environment. Valentine reimagines these lush environments in intricate compositions, flattening pictorial space and bringing botanical detail forward to the plane of the viewer, reminiscent of Japanese woodcuts and Pacifica textiles.

This new body of work explores two themes. The concept of “paradise” and the tension of post-colonial and migrant identities (Bright Paradise: Exotic History and Sublime Artifice, 2001); and the visual and spatial language of a fragmentary “floating world” of lifestyle and entertainment culture in Edo-era Japanese printmaking, Manga and 90s/00s Neopop (Hokusai x Manga: Japanese Pop Culture since 1680, 2016; Jeff Koons: Easyfun Ethereal, 2001).

Prior to returning to the visual arts, Kate had a career in libraries and cultural institutions, information policy, and most recently product management.

Kate Valentine studied printmaking and art history Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland, with a BFA in Printmaking Elam School of Fine Arts and a BA in Art History (University of Auckland and University of Edinburgh; recipient of the Printmaking Prize). Kate also has a Master of Information Studies from Victoria University of Wellington, where she was a Victoria Graduate Scholarship recipient, and awarded the Rosemary Smith-Horton Prize for Digital Technologies.

Kate is represented by McCarthy Gallery in Australia.

Artist Kate Valentine is sitting on the floor with her dog and selected artworks. She is wearing jeans and a tshirt and is laughing
Close up image of an artwork by Kate Valentine from the Bright Paradise series, showing the corner of the artwork in a wooden frame. The artwork is hot pink blue and green.
Kate Valentine writing in a notebook with a textbook of Japanese woodcuts from the Edo period which is an inspiration for her work
Artist Kate Valentine is painting in the foreground, out of focus. In the background is a large artwork called Declarative Oh Hey I Love You that is bright with blue botanical drawing over a 90s pastel palette