Kate Groobey portrays her personal experiences and explores the androcentric cannon of painting from a feminist, queer perspective using the tactics of British humour - innuendo, parody, absurdity, surreality, macabre, self-deprecation. Across vibrant gestural paintings, live performance, and video, Groobey brings to life the two-dimensional world of her paintings by dressing up as her central characters. Wearing painted costumes, and using handmade props, she choreographs grotesque dances to self-composed music in front of painted paper backdrops. Brilliant colour seduces and humour disarms the spectator as Groobey affirms her presence in a male dominated artistic tradition.


Kate Groobey (b. 1979, Leeds, UK) lives and works in Yorkshire, UK and the South of France. 

 

Solo Exhibitions

2024

Always Love, Sim Smith, London, UK

2022

Female Stallion, Sim Smith, London, UK

2020

Start Again, Sim Smith, London, UK

2019

Assholes Of Ambition, RIBOT, Milan, Italy

Pure Pleasure, Atopos with Ikon Galley, Venice, Italy

2017

I'm Made of Milk, Horton Gallery, New York, USA

The Good Life, Ever Gold Projects, San Francisco, USA

2016

Perfect Potatoes, Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles, USA

2015

Perfect | Parfait performance, David Lynch Club Silencio, Paris, France

2014

Ofr. Invites Kate Groobey, Paris, France

 

Selected Group Exhibitions

2024

miart, Ribot Gallery, Milan, Italy

2023

UNTITLED Miami Beach, Sean Horton Miami

Looking Like Fire, Sim Smith, London

2022

Prospect and Refuge, Sim Smith, London, UK

2021

Collection in Action, NOMUS - New National Museum in Gdansk, Poland

Wild Horses, Sim Smith, London, UK

Queen & Country, Art Car Boot Fair, London, UK

2020

Faster Than Ever, IKON, Birmingham, UK

Super Flatland, White Conduit Projects, London, UK, curated by Paul Carey-Kent

2019

What Kind of Spirit Is This?, Sim Smith, London, UK

2018

Played, Ebensperger Galerie, Salzburg, Austria

Desires, GNYP Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2017

UNTITLED, ART Miami, with Horton Gallery, USA

2016

SURRREAL, König Galerie, Berlin, Germany

NADA, Ever Gold Projects, NYC

The Classical, Transition Gallery, London, UK

Performance Night & Party, Code South Way, Marseille, France, curated by Emmanuelle Luciani

Art16, Villa Lena Foundation, London, UK

2014

100 Painters of Tomorrow, Beers London, UK

2013

I did did I, ASC Gallery, London, UK, curated by Kes Richardson

2012

The Perfect Place To Grow: 175 Years of the Royal College of Art, London, UK

Making Waves: International Contemporary Art from the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK

Backwards Man, CGP London, Cafe Gallery, London, UK

2011

Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011, ICA London & Site Gallery, S1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK

2010

Newspeak: British Art Now Part II, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK

 

Awards 

2018

DYCP funding, Arts Council England

Daiwa Foundation Art Prize, London/Tokyo

2008

Stanley Smith Scholarship, Royal College of Art

 

Education 

2008 - 2010

MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London, UK

1997 - 2000

BFA Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, Oxford University, Pembroke College, UK

 

Selected Bibliography

'Solo Exhibition by British Artist Kate Groobey Start Again', Mark Westall, FAD Magazine, September 2020

'Kate Groobey becomes the first woman to scoop the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize', Katy Cowan, Creative Boom, June 2018

 

Talks

Kate Groobey 'Always Love', Artist Talk with Gemma Rolls-Bentley, Sim Smith, London, UK, March 2024