Kate Newby is a New Zealand artist who works across a wide range of mediums, engaging with notions of physical knowledge and site-responsiveness. Often working with materials like textiles, ceramics and glass alongside found everyday objects such as coffee stains, nails or handwritten notes, Newby creates art that has a relationship with its environment, placing emphasis on what the work is doing in the space and how it is engaged with. She refers to her work as "physical knowledge", using it as a means to communicate lived experience. I am particularly drawn to a series of cyanotypes she recently made using shadows cast by handmade stained glass windows:
"In connection with her current solo exhibition at Adam Art Gallery, Te Pātaka Toi, Wellington, Kate Newby has made a suite of ten unique cyanotypes. This photographic method, which creates a distinctive blue image, has been used to record fleeting moments of sunlight shining through the holes in Newby’s hand made glass window panes. These glass panes, titled Always humming, have been inserted into several of the museum’s windows, replacing the existing glazing to temper the threshold between outdoor and indoor spaces, both of which are critical to Newby’s practice." - Michael Lett Gallery
"Kate Newby." Michael Lett. Last modified May 4, 2021. https://michaellett.com/rooms/kate-newby/.