Kate Fahey is an artist based between Kilkenny and London. Her practice explores ways of meaning-making outwith scientific and rational knowledge systems – conventional ways of understanding the world rooted in patriarchal, western historical narratives. Through moving image, sound, language, print and sculptural practice, she investigates embodied, esoteric, folkloric and more-than-human ways of knowing. She has shown her work at spaces including the ICA London, VISUAL Carlow, the Bluecoat Liverpool, the CCArt Andratx, Arti et Amicitiae Amsterdam and Pallas Projects Dublin. She received an MA in Fine Art Print at the Royal College of Art, London (2015) and completed a practice-based PhD at the University of the Arts London (2020). She is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University.
The RSA John Kinross Scholarship afforded me the opportunity to take some time out following my BA studies, and develop the next steps for my practice. Walking around Florence at night, to avoid the August crowds, I had time to reflect on the work made for my degree show at Gray’s School of Art (2013) and make plans for my upcoming MA studies. While I was in Florence, I was particularly drawn to early scientific instrumentation and experiments at the Museo Galileo, remnants of the renaissance impulse to understand and empirically solve the mysteries of the universe. This tension between what can be calculably known, and other forms of meaning-making continues to resonate in my practice. Later, on a residency at An Cridhe on the Isle of Coll as part of the RSA Residencies for Scotland program (2016), I spent time reflecting on my MA studies, walking on the island, and collecting quartz stones dyed naturally from seaweed from which I subsequently developed a new body of C-Type prints and exhibited at Gossamer Fog Gallery in London.
