Kate Fitzharris — Biography
Kate Fitzharris (b. 1974, Wellington, New Zealand) completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Dunedin School of Art, with a major in ceramics (1993-1996). She has held a number of residencies, including: Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park [Japan], 2019; Tylee Cottage [Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui] (2018); and Doris Lusk Residency [Risingholme Community Centre, Christchurch] (2017).
Among her other honours, she was a finalist for the 2019 Wallace Arts Trust Awards, and received Portage Ceramic Merit Awards in 2002, 2010 and 2014. Her recent awards include the Premier Award at the Ceramics New Zealand Diamond Jubilee Exhibition (2021) and a 2021-2022 Waiclay Merit Award, Waikato Museum.
The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park Foundation, the Dowse, the James Wallace Arts Trust, and the Waikato Museum include her work in their collections. Her ceramic figures have been shown at galleries across New Zealand, including solo exhibitions at Masterworks Gallery, Sarjeant Gallery, the Lopdell House Gallery and the Blue Oyster Art Project Space, among others. In 2020, under the auspices of the Dunedin Dream Brokerage, she created, “The Commons,” a temporary “earth works” installation that featured a large clay figure in the Dunedin Botanic Gardens.
Kate’s primary medium is ceramics, though she also explores the use of “found materials,” such as vintage fabric and wild clay. Typically constructing small-scale, often anthropomorphic, objects, the artist asks viewers to look closely, to examine her creations in all their intricate detail of surface, colour and, ultimately, to reflect upon how contemporary culture rarely encourages us to engage with the subtleties of our environment and its ever-proliferating collection of mass-produced, characterless objects.
Artist’s Statement
Publications
2022 Essays by Hilary Radner and Cecilia Novero