KATHERINE SANKEY
born in Paris, N.Irish & Australian-settler, based in Dublin
PET detail, Luan Gallery, Athlone, Ireland 2018, private collection. Photo: John Owens
Contact: kmsankey@gmail.com
Statement
Katherine Sankey’s expanded sculptural practice embodies an intersection of bodily experience with what we gouge and pump out of the planet. Responding to how we experience and share our own and others’ agency in the ‘new climatic regime’, (Latour, 2017), Sankey’s sculptures use living plant tissue and human supply lines to delve into precarities and dependencies, both human and trans-species. Through navigating the unexpected effects of the human extractive machine of supply and power, Sankey’s practice engages in a geo-feminist-queering conversation through porous, cyborg-type apparatuses. Their sculpture is both sprawling and minutely-detailed, clinging between living entity and decay. By scrutinizing the experience of entanglement, consciousness and survival within the world, she develops an expanded sculptural drama of mutation, adaptation and multi-species resistance. With creations that navigate issues of dis-ease, disturbance and repair, Sankey’s art practice evolves works that wrestle, often through absurdity and humour, with the complexities of how to forge our alliances and relationships of kin within the spectacle of humanity’s great planetary over-reach.
BIO
Upcoming is Galway International Art Festival, Interface Inagh, Connemarra, Ireland, curator Valeria Ceregini and SUBSTRATA 3 person show at Dublin Port Substation, curator Claire Halpin. In 2024/5 the group shows she participated in were Future Fragilities, Palazzo Birago, Turin Art Week 2024, curator Valeria Ceregini and Connections, cross-border Ireland touring exhibition, curator Jacquie Moore (until June 2025) and the RHA Annual. Thresholds to the Unseen, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, curator Brenda McParland; RHA Annual 2024, Dublin as invited artist; Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Distinct, exhibition about disability and climate change, curator AlanJames Burns and PALLAS P/S, Periodic Review - Maslow’s Hammer, curator Gavin Murphy. Sankey’s recent solo/duo exhibitions include 2024 PETRICHOR– smelling the rain, STAC Clonmel, two person dynamic collaboration with Anna Macleod, curator Helena Tobín; EarthLab: living matters, solo, RHA Gallery, Dublin, curator Sarah McAuliffe; an atom bomb in each morsel of life, solo, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, curator Sheena Barrett; SANKEY | WALKER, The DOCK Leitrim 2023 duo including collaborations with Corban Walker, curator Sarah Searson and Containment in Gallery 1, RUA RED Tallaght in 2020. Sankey has received Arts Council of Ireland Bursaries, the DCC Visual Art Bursary and received 2 Agility Awards. Public collections inlude: OPW, Dublin Castle, Arts Council of Ireland Collection and Visual Artists Ireland.
See INTERACTIVE Map of art practice concepts: Pallas P/S AIP Pages
CURRICULUM VITAE
Solo Exhibitions (and duo)
2024 PETRICHOR - smelling the rain, STAC Clonmel (Sth Tipperary Arts Centre) Ireland, with Anna Macleod,
Curator Helena Tobín
2023 EarthLab: living matters RHA Gallery Dublin, Ireland, Curator Sarah McAuliffe
an atom bomb in each morsel of life, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, Ireland, Curator Sheena Barrett.
SANKEY | WALKER, The DOCK Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland (collaboration with Corban Walker), Curator
Sarah Searson
2021 HYDROZOMES | waterbodies, PALLAS Projects Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
2020/21 Containment: Chthonic Parts II & III, RUA RED, Tallaght, Dublin, Ireland
2014 Organelle (studio show), Distillery Court, Dublin, Ireland
2007 Zones of Proximity, The SHED, Foley St, Dublin, Ireland
1993 BREATH, Galeria Pryzmat, Krakow, Poland
Beginning Backwards, Chopin Museum Gallery, Grodkow, Poland
Everyday Gravities, install-action, Galeria Impart, BWA, Wroclaw, Poland
Corrosion of Sense, install-action at Galeria Entropia, Wroclaw, Poland
What Matters What Margins? Install-action at Galeria X, Wroclaw, Poland
Brododactylos, Galeria Labyrynt 2, BWA Lublin, Poland
1992 Mephisto’s Epilogue live performance, Lublin Television, Poland
Further Forth - Firth of Forth, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
1990 Polar-switch, Rondeau Gallery, Sydney, Australia
1989 Another Axis, Pan Sydney ’89, W.I.N.D.O.W. Gallery, Sydney, Australia
Group Exhibitions
2025 Connections, OPW Cross-border touring exhibition, Ireland
RHA 195th Annual Exhibition, Dublin
Galway International Arts Festival, Interface Inagh, Conemarra, Ireland
2024 Future Fragilities, Palazzo Birago, during Artissima, Turin, Italy 26 Oct - 4 Nov Curator Valeria Ceregini
Thresholds of the Unseen, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, until 1st Nov, Curator Brenda McParland
DISTINCT, Disability Art Festival, The Project Art Centre Gallery, Dublin, Curator AlanJames Burns
Invited Artist, 194th RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin
2023/4 Maslow’s Hammer, Periodic Review, PALLAS P/S, Dublin, Ireland
2021 Woman in the Machine, VISUAL, Carlow
PALIMPSEST with @5lampsarts, CHQ, IFSC, Dublin
PLATFORM 21, ‘Worlds of Their Own’, Draíocht Gallery, Blanchardstown
191st RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin
2020 Invited Artist, 190th RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin
ROOT Exhibition, Leitrim Organic Centre, Online
Kunsthal Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition, Copenhagen, Denmark
2019 RUA RED Winter Open, Tallaght, Ireland
Tactical Magic, TULCA Festival of Visual Art, Galway, Ireland
RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin, Ireland
2018 CAST, Luan Gallery, Athlone, Ireland
2008-09 Sculpture in Context, National Botanic Gardens, Dublin, Ireland
RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin, Ireland
Ni Hao-Dia Duit, Cross-cultural Project by Jay KOE, IMMA Studios, Dublin, Ireland
2006 Initiation of Moore Street Lending Library Project with Fire Station Artist Studios, Moore Street Dublin.
2005 Latitude Longitude Season, Catalyst Arts Gallery, Belfast, Ireland
2002 Crossings, Australian Aboriginal & European Artist Exchange, COLLECTIF 12, Maningrida, Northern
Territory, Australia
2001 Crossings, COLLECTIF 12, Paris, France
1997 Downside Collection Exhibition, Julian Barran Gallery Ltd, London, England
@re we close?, Galerie Artsenal, Paris, France
1993 Bloomsday, La Centre Culturel Irlandaise, Paris, France
Lingua Franca Sculpture Symposium, BWA Galleries, Wroclaw and Czestochowa, Poland
1992 The Unofficial Supplement to Bruno Schulz, The University of Katowice, Cieszyn, Poland
M.o.M.I.A., Jerzy Grotowski Centre, Wroclaw, Poland
Pentagonale Plus, Exhibition of New European Art, Knights Park Gallery, Richard Demarco, London,
England
1990 Aerial Art - Cathedral of the Industrial Trapeze, The Foundry Galleries, Sydney, Australia
Seriously Fruit Exhibition, Rondeau Gallery, Sydney, Australia
1989 White-Wash Show, Rondeau Gallery, Sydney, Australia
The Production of Optical Equivalences, Exhibition of Australian Satirical Art, EMR Gallery, Sydney,
Australia
Bursaries/Awards
2025 Best Sculpture Prize, Solomon Fine Art Gallery, 195th RHA Annual Exhibition
2021 & 24 Agility Award, Arts Council of Ireland
2021 & 22 Visual Art Bursary, Arts Council of Ireland
2020 Fire Station Artists’ Studios Sculpture Award Bursary
Dublin City Council Visual Arts Bursary
2019 Best Artwork, RUA RED Winter Open - Solo Exhibition Award for 2020/21
2002 Travel Bursary – Arts Council of Ireland
1992 Exhibitions Bursary, BWA Galleries , Poland
Lectures/ Residencies
2022 Lecture, Culture Night, Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin, Ireland
2021 Lecture, National College of Art and Design, , Dublin, Ireland
Draíocht AIR Residency, Fingal County Council, Ireland
2020 Lecture, RHA, Royal Hibernian Academy ‘Plinth Politics’ , Dublin, Ireland
2004/5 Residency, Larkin Community College , Dublin, Ireland
1993/4 Residency, Downside Abbey School Bath, England
1992/3 Residency, Galleria ‘X’ Wroclaw, Poland
1992 Residency, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
Education
1994-7 DEA, Art & Literary Theory, Hélène CIXOUS, Université Paris VIII, France
1990-1 PG Dip. Theatre Design, Trent University, Nottingham, England
1986-9 BA Visual Art (sculpture), Sydney College of the Arts, Australia
Public Collections:
State Collection, Office of Public Works, Dublin Castle
Arts Council of Ireland Collection
Visual Artists Ireland Collection