Kate Southworth

Painting, writing, protocol. The work begins before it is known. It traces the relation between psyche, the imaginal, and the material world.

Kate Southworth works slowly, and across registers. A painting may begin in a dream, move through receptive drawing, find its way into a written text or ritual act. Each work carries traces of the others; the practice accumulates as a network of partial elements, distributed across time, space, and different states of visibility.

Her practice spans three decades and has been shown internationally. In 2025 her work appeared in Tranceducers: Collection of Mediumistic and Visionary Art in London alongside Ithell Colquhoun and Georgiana Houghton. Early digital work, made collaboratively as Glorious Ninth, was shown when the territory was new. It is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Rhizome Artbase at the New Museum, New York.

She completed a PhD in Fine Art at the University of Leeds under Griselda Pollock and Chris Taylor. She has delivered talks at Tate St Ives, Tate Modern, and Tate Britain.

Selected Circulated Work

2026 Tranceducers: Art of Visionaries, Mediums and Automatists, Crypt Gallery, St Ives
2025 Tranceducers: Collection of Mediumistic and Visionary Art, GPS Gallery Soho, London
2025 The Order of the Sun and Moon: In the Land of the Living Stones, Crypt Gallery, St Ives
2024 The Order of the Sun and Moon, College of Psychic Studies, London
2019 WEB-RETRO, Seoul Museum of Art, Korea (Glorious Ninth)
2018 Leonorana Magazine, Issue 1 (poetic text)
2011 Electronic Village Galleries (Arts Council England)
2009 ISEA 2009, Belfast, international juried exhibition (Glorious Ninth)
2009 Craftivism, Arnolfini, Bristol (Glorious Ninth)
2009 Databrowser 04: Creating Insecurity, invited artwork: Unstable Lists (Glorious Ninth)
2005-2006 Net:Reality, Arts Council England touring exhibition, commissioned work: Packet Switching (Glorious Ninth)

Collections

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Artport Digital Collection (Glorious Ninth)
Rhizome Artbase, New Museum, New York (Glorious Ninth)
Private Collections

Selected Talks

2024 "The Alchemical Soul Paints Itself Transforming," Alchemy Conference, University of Oxford
2023 Artist talks and discussion with Dr Amy Hale, The Order of the Sun and Moon, Treadwell's Books, London
2010 "Distributed Art: Distributed Exhibitions," Beyond the Academy symposium, Tate Britain
2010 Electronic Village Galleries, Cornwall Workshop convened by Teresa Gleadowe and Martin Clarke, Tate St Ives
2007 Chair and co-organiser, Disrupting Narratives, Tate Modern
2007 "Free Software and Open Source as Contemporary Art," Social Systems, Tate St Ives

Selected Publications

2024 The Order of the Sun and Moon (The Universe Machine)
2021 Furtherfield Podcast, The Radical Friendship Series
2020 Interalia Magazine, Alchemy, Occult, Esoteric Practices Issue
2022 Vox, "Why rituals, not routines"

Education

2014 PhD Fine Art, University of Leeds (Griselda Pollock, Chris Taylor)

Awards and Funding

Multiple project awards, Arts Council England