Kitty McKay

Kitty McKay is an artist and researcher eternally preoccupied with the ways in which public space is made and unmade. Working across installation, moving-image, sculpture, sound, collage and writing, their approach to practice is informed by feminist, queer and crip frameworks for understanding and overcoming the ways power constructs place. Their installations seek to evoke the errant, dissonant and unauthorised socialities and practices that happen in urban space through the dislocation of materials and media that comprise and enforce spatial hegemony. 

Kitty is in the final year of an MFA at Newcastle University. They are a former member of the School of the Damned and received a BA in Fine Art and History of Art from Goldsmiths University in 2018. Kitty works in and around many of Newcastle’s artist-led DIY initiatives, and they are a researcher on various collaborative projects exploring long-term futures for artist-led spaces and workspaces in the North East of England. Kitty also runs Incursions, a collaborative, socially-engaged art and research project, which uses group walking to deepen relationships between people and place. Incursions’ regular ‘walking forums’ generate group discussion in order to imagine what lies beyond neoliberal spatial hegemony, drawing on psycho/socio-geography, social histories, pop cultures, personal experiences, participatory research methods, mapping, archiving and friendship. 

They have exhibited with and programmed public activity for BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, New Contemporaries, Farrell Centre, The NewBridge Project, Institute for Contemporary Arts, South London Gallery, Firstsite Gallery, The National Trust, Vane Gallery and Art Licks.

@kittmck