Kate Valentine is a painter and printmaker from Aotearoa New Zealand, now living and working on Gayamaygal Country near Manly, New South Wales.
Valentine's practice encompasses three persistent themes: flora and landscape works exploring place, identity, and relationship to country; pop-inspired pieces investigating gender expression within consumer culture; and contemporary portraiture.
Inspired by her recent move to Gayamaygal country near the NSW coast, the Bright Paradise collection documents both native and introduced flora within the artist's local environment. Valentine reimagines these lush landscapes through intricate compositions that flatten pictorial space and bring botanical details forward to the viewer's plane, drawing visual connections to Japanese woodcuts and Pacific textiles.
This new body of work explores two interconnected themes: the concept of "paradise" and the tensions inherent in post-colonial and migrant identities (referencing Bright Paradise: Exotic History and Sublime Artifice, 2001); and the visual and spatial language of the fragmentary "floating world" found in lifestyle and entertainment culture, from Edo-era Japanese printmaking through manga to 1990s and 2000s Neopop movements (Hokusai x Manga: Japanese Pop Culture since 1680, 2016; Jeff Koons: Easyfun Ethereal, 2001).
Prior to returning to visual arts, Valentine built a career spanning libraries and cultural institutions, information policy, and product management.
Valentine holds a BFA in Printmaking from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland, where she was awarded the Printmaking Prize, and a BA in Art History from the University of Auckland and University of Edinburgh. She also earned a Master of Information Studies from Victoria University of Wellington as a Victoria Graduate Scholarship recipient and was awarded the Rosemary Smith-Horton Prize for Digital Technologies.
Kate Valentine is proudly represented by McCarthy Gallery, Australia.
