Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is delighted to announce representation of British artist Katy Moran, whose first solo exhibition with the gallery Let’s get some AIR will open on 2 May 2025. The exhibition represents a shift in Moran’s practice, which has undergone striking developments in scale and technique since her last solo presentation in London. On Wednesday 14 May at 6 pm, Moran will be in conversation at the gallery with writer and broadcaster, Ben Luke.
Known for her compelling abstractions that explore form, colour and surface, Moran enlists a spectrum of mark-making in the expression of different atmospheres. While some of her paintings suggest traditional land or seascapes and conjure figurative associations, they are essentially records of the intangible and are deliberately engaged in sensation, as opposed to representation. Much of Moran’s inspiration comes from her transcendental meditation practice and ideas for paintings are incubated during these sessions. This connection with her unconscious allows for an intuitive approach that prioritises the autonomy of paint as medium. The incident of coincidence in dialogue with the artist’s hand guides the development of each of Moran’s paintings, which employ experimental methods in their facture, from drips and pours, to body painting. By allowing the nature of paint to inform the painting process, Moran is antithetically liberated from the bonds of materiality.
Moran’s paintings are by nature dichotomous, bringing together opposing forces in a single composition: fullness and space, simplicity and complexity, control and abandon. Where the readymade has previously played a central role in her work, the artist has recently set aside the found, framed paintings she used as supports in favour of larger canvases that allow her to work at scale. A sense of artistic freedom characterises these new paintings, which unite the raw, fresh energy of splattered paint with thickets of dense mark making, and translucent washes of colour. In Indigo Moon Moran uses a squeegee to propel swathes of inky paint across the canvas, the diluted pigment revealing a palimpsest of sensuous purple spectra interacting with marbled pools of ochre that hasten across the upper quadrant of the composition. Moran’s palette subliminally chimes with the changing seasons, as seen in the vertiginous casajmg, which was executed over the colder months and sees icy blue and white rivulets of paint cascade down the canvas. This sense of the elemental defines Moran’s practice, which ultimately unites a profound affinity with the natural world with a commitment to abstraction and painting as object.
Katy Moran (b. 1975, Manchester) lives and works in Hertfordshire. She completed an MA Fine Art in painting at the Royal College of Art, London in 2005. Moran’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Parasol Unit for Contemporary Art, London (2015); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2013); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2010); Tate St. Ives (2009); and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (2008). Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at Tate St. Ives (2018); Aspen Art Museum, CO (2015); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2013); SFMOMA, CA (2012); and Tate Britain, London (2008). Her work is housed in important public and private collections including Arts Council Collection, London; David Roberts Art Foundation; Government Art Collection, London; The Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; Royal College of Art, London; Tate, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT; and Zabludowicz Collection, London. Moran is also represented by Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York.
