Kate Beynon
Kate Beynon

BFA Painting(VCA/Melb), Current PhD Candidate, Monash Art, Design and Architecture (Monash)

Kate Beynon (’88) has held over 25 solo exhibitions and participated in over 100 group exhibitions in Australia and internationally since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1993. Highlights include the recent solo exhibition An-Li: A Chinese Ghost Tale at TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2015 and the group exhibitions Re-Picturing the Feminine in Kochi, India, 2012–13 and Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York in 2007.

In 1999, Kate received a Women’s Artist Award through Arts Victoria, and has been the recipient of several grants through Arts Victoria and the Australia Council of the Arts, including a residency in Harlem, New York in 2004. She has been a finalist in major Art prizes, including five times in the Archibald Prize. Her work is held in many significant public and private collections in Australia and internationally, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney and the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt, Germany.

In her art, Kate engages with fantastic tales of the unexpected. Since 1996, her work across a wide range of media has been inspired by an ancient Chinese story by Gan Bao, Li Ji: The girl who killed the python. The re-telling of the tale of Li Ji, a ‘warrior girl’ who triumphs over evil, presented the opportunity to merge personal and collective stories and histories as a way of reflecting on issues of mixed cultural heritage in contemporary society. In 2015, she published the book An-Li: A Chinese Ghost Tale (Art & Australia 2015).

In 2013, Kate received an Australian Postgraduate Award and is currently undertaking her PhD in Fine Art. Kate is based in Melbourne with husband Mike, their sixteen year old son Rali and dog Tudo.

November 2015
Photo by Jesse Marlow