"The tensions and anxieties manifested within the dichotomy of comfort and unease are subjects of my investigation."
- Katie Hubbell
Procession, 20" x 11", Digital Photograph On Sunset Metallic Paper
The tensions and anxieties manifested within the dichotomy of comfort and unease are subjects of my investigation. Through the use of immersive installations, video and objects, the work orchestrates experiences of empathy and connectivity through reciprocal physicality. I am interested in how the viewer becomes keenly aware of their own body through these haptic experiences.
My work is centred on the exploration of visceral materials in relation to the body. As I question ideals, beauty and the gaze, I explore ways of analysing psychological friction inherent in the everyday by pushing banal or innocent actions and materials to the point of absurdity. As the viewer attempts to engage the materials they suddenly unravel, become tangled, abstracted and abject. They are invited to a dialogue between sensuality and repulsion, boredom and flirtation, consumption and anxiety.
Theadora (Detail), 30" x 17", Digital Photograph On Sunset Metallic Paper
Katie Hubbell’s (she/ her) multimedia practice operates within the formal slippages of installation, sculpture, performance, and video. She examines mass-media aesthetization, highlighting the tensions and comforts embedded within sensuous images. Using objects from everyday life, Hubbell’s practice reveals the flirtations and repulsions, states of boredom and states of obsession, parallels and contradictions which inhabit twenty-first century advertisement culture and self-help models of care.
Hubbell received an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. She has been awarded residencies at the Wassaic Project in 2019 and 2018, Elsewhere Museum Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Oxbow School of Art and Artist Residency, 77Art Rutland Vermont Art Center, Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, and was a visiting artist in residence at University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Hubbell’s work has been exhibited in England, Wales, the Netherlands, Poland, and throughout the United States. Hubbell currently lives and works in Philadelphia, PA where she is a co-director of Practice Gallery and one third of SYZYGY collab with Danni O’Brien and Kenzie Wells.