Kate Jacob's is a contemporary abstract artist who works predominantly in paint. Her work are like fragments of thoughts gathered together in a series of individual, yet interconnected pieces. Paint and collage are employed to both gaze and reflect upon the internal world they are created from, and the external world they wonder about. A place where abstraction is the means of communication to interpret, through the emotional, analytical, and physical responses to material, experiences that cannot be shaped or described by words alone.
Her paintings, and more recent collaged assemblages, tiptoe between conscious mark-making, chance and opportunity. Her background in embroidered textiles, as well as painting, means she has a deep connection to materiality and the process of making. Jacob stitches together and layers these stories of materials to establish relationships, conflicting narratives and off-kilter connections
Semblances of autobiography merge with an ongoing enquiry into absence and presence. Working between mediums and materials, the past is re-examined to create new forms collaged from decades of abstract thoughts and notations on lived moments.
She works from a studio on the edge of the city centre where the walls and surfaces are used to capture thoughts, ideas and colours; scribbling phases, dabbing colour, testing out marks onto surrounding surfaces to make sense of and inform the process.
Biography
Kate Jacob is an artist and curator who trained in Textiles at Manchester School of Art in 1993, Turps Correspondence Course in 2021 and Morley Fine Art Mentoring 2022. She has exhibited at The Manchester Contemporary, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, Pearls and the Oyster with Birley Studios, a solo show at Mura Ma, Stockport and Terrace Gallery in London. She also curates shows with Prosaic, a Sheffield-based collective and was a co-curator for A Bell is A Cup, featuring 59 international painters at Bloc Project Space, Sheffield.
Her work is held in private collections in the UK, France, and Australia. Awards include Arts Council Research and Development funds, long-listed for the 2024 Beep Painting Prize, and shortlisted for Materiality, Edition One. Press features include The Guardian, Corridor 8, and The Yorkshire Post.
She’s developed and managed many art projects, including Print and Drawing Summer Schools at the former Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, and co-founder of Open up, South Yorkshire's open studio event, now in its 25th year.
She works from a studio on the edge of the city centre where the walls and surfaces are used to capture thoughts, ideas and colours; scribbling phases, dabbing colour, testing out marks onto surrounding surfaces to make sense of and inform the process.
