Katy Stewart
Katy Stewart is a British artist, chef and mother living and working in the French Alps.
Drawing on a lifelong obsession with the National Geographic, she is fascinated by forces of energy and physical processes, taking geological imagery to explore transformations of Earth and Self. She works using film, printmaking, collage and text.
Her short quasi-science/fiction films place particular emphasis on the ethics of interplay between large scale technology and the earth, using tongue in cheek humour to question and critique the voice of authority. Set to the scale of body, recent works on paper concern more personal themes and are often produced in the immediate aftermath of significant situations or conversations. Producing collages and poems in this way is integral to her process of connecting with and working through a confusion of emotions, and imbues the work with an intimate and poetic intensity.
Katy obtained her BFA hons at Edinburgh College of Art, and later completed an MA at Central Saint Martins in London on an AHRB scholarship. In 2018, she was selected for a residency in Macduff, Aberdeenshire, her subsequent solo show addressing themes of local food poverty and the climatic and political problematics of producing wheat flour in Scotland. She is currently working on a documentary film exploring experiences of ‘Cultural Homelessness’; a series of discussions with mothers around belonging, becoming and making a place for oneself in a foreign culture, which will go into post production in late 2023.
Her work has been exhibited around the UK in group exhibitions in Bristol, London and Glasgow, as well as being held in private collections in Amsterdam and Switzerland. Katy has largely worked as a chef since 2008, as well as 4 years as an Artist-Support Worker at Studio Upstairs Therapeutic Arts Community in Bristol. She is the mother of two children and is happiest when gardening.
