Kate Gilmore (artist)


Kate Gilmore is an American artist working in including video, sculpture, photography, and performance. Gilmore's work engages with ideas of femininity through her own physicality and critiques of gender and sex. Gilmore lives and works in New York City, NY and is Associate Professor of Art+Design at SUNY Purchase. Gilmore has exhibited at the 2010 Whitney Biennial, the Brooklyn Museum, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, White Columns; Contemporary Arts Center, Artpace, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Rose Art Museum, and PS1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center.

Early life and education

Born in Washington, D.C., Gilmore attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, graduating in 1997. Gilmore received her masters of fine arts in 2002 from the School of Visual Arts in New York

Work

Challenging herself by engaging in and performing physically demanding actions, Gilmore exaggerates the absurdity of these actions by frequently dressing in overtly feminine attire such as floral-print skirts and colorful high heels. Described as messy and chaotic, Gilmore's work gives a contemporary revision on feminine and hardcore performances that started in the 1960s and 1970s with artists like Marina Abramović and Chris Burden Gilmore's work explores female identity, struggle, and displacement; being the protagonist in her video work, Gilmore "attempts to conquer self-constructed obstacles" Gilmore works with making video pieces and live performances that often showcase herself but she also has pieces in which other women perform the acts like her piece Walk The Walk which is also Gilmore's first public performance piece. Starting in 2004, Gilmore's video piece entitled My Love is an Anchor showcases the artist herself beating on a cement filled bucket with her leg stuck inside; hearing her grunts and groans and she attempts to escape, the video ends with no real footage of the artist escaping. Due to her unrelenting nature with her work, Gilmore's pieces make the viewer feel as though she's accepted a ridiculous dare
Her performance piece "Beat" at the On Stellar Rays gallery in New York with fellow artist Karen Heagle, featured waist-high, red enameled, metal cubes distributed throughout the gallery space. These cubes became props for weekend performances, featuring Gilmore and other female performers, who "stomp, kick and pound on the Minimalist boxes with a slow, steady rhythm, so oppressively loud that it fills the gallery with an echoing beat of warning and feminist-tinged rage."

Residencies and awards