Meynell, Katharine
Katharine Meynell studied at Byman Shaw School of Art and the Royal College of Art where, on 2000, she also completed a doctoral thesis on Time Based Work in Britain since 1980.
Meynell’s practice ranges from moving image works, to drawings, bookworks and performances. She was Abbey Fellow at the British School in Rome 2003-04. Video installations include ‘Moonrise’ (Tate Liverpool), ‘Her Gaze’ (ICP New York), ‘Vampires Eat’ (Kettles Yard), ‘Light, Water, Power’ (LUX), ‘The Island Bell’ (Harris Museum) and ‘It’s inside’ (Cafe Gallery). Her work has been shown internationally and in recent years as a commission for the LUX opening in 1997; at the Whitechapel Open in 1996 and in ‘Artists Books’, Tate Gallery, London in 1995. She has received numerous awards including a ‘New Collaborations Fund’ award for her Bookworks in 1992 and a ‘New Directors’ award from the British Film Institute in 1987.
Meynell’s work combines a strong visual sense with unflinching scrutiny of life and its vicissitudes. Her work with the artist Alistair Skinner tackled the mystifying process of disease and death in a multi-media installation at the Cafe Gallery. The work culminated in the publication ‘It’s Inside’ (Marion Boyars, 2005) in which art and life fuse into a moving account of a progressive illness and a relationship that is not only subject to the pressures of ill health but the structures of health care in the UK and the limitations of medical knowledge.
Meynell is currently Reader in Fine Art at Middlesex University.
– Catherine Elwes and Chris Meigh-Andrews (editors), 2006, ‘Analogue: Pioneering Video from the UK, Canada and Poland (1966-88)’, Exhibition Catalogue, EDAU Preston
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Interview of Katharine Meynell
View the interview transcript here
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Exhibitions:
1977
Installation (with HUMP), B2 Butlers Wharf, London.
The AIR Gallery, London (with HUMP).
The Oval House, London (with HUMP).
The Dumb Show (with HUMP), the Drill Hall, London.
Barbican Arts Group Show, Barbican, London.1979
Women’s Arts Alliance, London.1981
Summer Show, London Film Makers Co-op, London.
Postcards with my mother, performance at Franklin Furnace, New York.1982
Women Live Festival, London FilmmakersÌ Co-op, London (with HUMP).
Video work in Women in Art Education Conference.1983
London Video Arts, Air Gallery, London.
Royal College of Art, London.1984
Give My Regards To Frith Street, London Video Arts, London.1985
Channel 5, ICA, London.
LVA Cafe Gallery, Southwark.
London Film Makers Co-op Summer Show, London.1986
Scanners, AIR Gallery, London.
Women and Art Society, Lanchester Polytechnic.
Third Generation, Women Sculptors Today, Drew Gallery, Canterbury.
National Review of Live Art, Midland Group, Nottingham.1987
I am… Torriano Film Association, London.
4 Artists for Islington, Hardware Gallery, London.
Anyone who had an Art, Byam Shaw Gallery, London.
National Review of Live Art, Riverside Studios & Third Eye, Glasgow.
Bracknell Video Festival, South Hill Park, Bracknell.1988
BookWorks, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (with Susan Johanknecht).
Genlock, L.V.A./Interim Arts touring show.
Women’s Images of Women, Zap Club, Brighton.
Down the Tube, Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester.
Cinematheque, ICA, London.
European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck.
National Review of Live Art, Glasgow.
London Film Festival, Museum of Moving Image, London.
Columbia Video Festival, Columbia.1989
Moonrise video wall, Video Positive, Tate Gallery, Liverpool.
Moonrise video installation, Cornerhouse, Manchester.
Cinematheque, ICA, London.
Femme Cathodique, Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
AirTime, Air Gallery, London.
The Preview Show, London FilmmakersÌ Co-op, London.
Video screening, Tate Gallery, London.
Video Brazil, Sao Paolo.
Mind the Gap, Humberside College, Hull.
Australian Video Festival, Sydney.
Acts of Remembrance, Harris Museum, Preston.
Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen.
Phoenix, Leicester.
Video wall, Diorama, London.
Screening, London Film Makers Co-op, London.
Camden Video Festival, London.
BookWorks, British Museum, London (with Susan Johanknecht).
London Film Festival, Museum of the Moving Image, London.1990
Wide Angle, Birmingham.
Hull Film and Video Festival, Hull.1991
Berlin Video Fest, Berlin.
Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck.
Sheffield Media Show, Sheffield City Polytechnic, Sheffield.
Screening, Hull Film Theatre, Hull.
Screening, London Film Makers Co-op, London.1992
A Woman’s Perspective, BookWorks (with Susan Johanknecht).
A book for a performance installation, International Centre of Photography, New York.
Pullit X, Pullit Gallery, London.
Women’s Art at New Hall, New Hall, Cambridge.
London Film Festival, London FilmmakersÌ Co-op, London.
Eat and Vampire s eat, Kettles Yard, Cambridge and Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool.1993
International Artists Centre, Posnan, Poland.
What She Wants, Impressions, York.
Vampire s eat, Film Museum, Amsterdam.1994
Art in Time, Cardiff.
A Small Video Festival, Trondheim, Norway.
Stills Gallery, Edinburgh.
Minnories, Colchester.
Stains, Quicksilver Gallery, Middlesex University (with Jim Mooney).1995
Gasworks, London (with Jim Mooney).
Reading the Book, Bookworks, Bath.
Choco-block, The Chocolate Factory/Middlesex University, London.
Artists Books, Tate Gallery, London (with Susan Johanknecht).1996
KvindeMuseet i Danmark, Arhus, Denmark.
Art in Time, Cardiff.
Digital Laboratory, London Electronic Arts/Cyberia, London.
Pandemonium, screening at Cinematheque, ICA, London.
Mouse on up, Sans Walk Gallery, London.
Kingsgate Gallery, London.
Whitechapel Open, London Electronic Arts, London.
The Vertical Axis, Speckled Eye.
Galerie 5020, Salzburg, Austria (with Jim Mooney).
SAD, Gasworks, London.1997
is this a performance?, Digital Laboratory, London Electronic Arts, London.
20/20 Kingsgate Gallery, London.
WheNever, Commercial Gallery, London.
Light Water Power for the opening of Lux, London (with Alistair Skinner).1998
Angel Row, Nottingham.
attitudes 1-8, Link Gallery, Royal College of Art, London.
Suntrap, Fabrica, Brighton.
Hamburg Short Film Festival, Hamburg.
Kulturhuset, Bergen.
Candid Gallery, London.1999
Spin, National Sound Archive at the British Library, London.
Sweetie, British School at Rome, Rome (and touring).
Scale, Kingsgate Gallery, London.2000
Volumes (of Vulnerability) touring: Standpoint Gallery, London; Buchgalerie Mergemeier, Germany;The Dean Clough Galleries, Halifax; Mills College, California; Muzeum Ksiazki Artystycznej Poland; Hull Time Based Arts; San Francisco Centre for the Book; Lopdell House Gallery, Aukland, N.Z. (with Susan Johanknecht).
The Nunnery, Bow Arts Trust, London.2001
Verbal inter Visual , The Lethaby Galleries, London (with Susan Johanknecht).
Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster.
Filmwaves, Lux, London.
Digital Aesthetics, Harris Museum, Preston.
Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London.2002
The Hygiene Show, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London (with Alistair Skinner).
Sci-art symposium, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (with Alistair Skinner).2003
Lux Open, Royal College of Art, London.
Surface, Project Space 134, Middlesex University.
British School at Rome Gallery, Rome.2004
Experiments in Moving Image, Old ‘Lumiere’ Cinema, University of Westminster, London.
Middlesex Fine Art at The Ecology Centre, London.
Artists Books, Gr?ner Collection, F?rstenfeldbruck, Germany (with Susan Johanknecht).
rien a declarer, NovArt Festival, Bordeaux, France.
Wellcome Trust screening at Euro Science Open Forum, Stockholm (with Alistair Skinner).2005
Kingsgate Gallery, London.
Talking Back to Science, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle.
ItÌs Inside, Projects Cafe Gallery, Southwark (with Alistair Skinner).
Abbey Fellows, Apt Gallery, London.2006
gefn press, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont.2007
Cunning Chapters, British Library, London.Group exhibitions
2005
Talking Back to Science Tyneside Cinema
Abbey Fellows Apt Gallery, London2006
Nuit Blanche, Miss China Beauty Room, Paris
Analogue Tate Modern/Polish Cultural Institute & touring2007
Cunning Chapters British Library
UWE Bristol -
Videography:
Videotapes
1980
Housework1982
RCA Women’s Group1983
Diary
Belly
Momento1984
The Sister’s Story1985
Untitled – Entopic Pregnancy1986
HannahÌs Song (5 screen)
A Book For A Performance (2 screen)1987
Light, Water, Power (4 screen, with Alistair Skinner)
Black Stock Estate Tapes
Group Portrait (3 screen video)1988
Her Gaze (2 screen video)
Medusa1989
Moonrise (3 screen)1990
Ants and Balls (2 screen)
As She Opened Her Eyes She Looked Over Her Shoulder and Saw Someone Passing The Other Side of the Doorway With a Strange Smile (funded by BBC)1992
Eat (5 screen)
Vampire Seat1993
Poznan Installation1994
Dis-enchantment Re-enchantment (3 screen)
Lost and Found (5 screen)1995
The Living Room
Wet and Dry1996
Fucking Tragic
Numos1998
Attitudes 1-8
Blue Eyes (2 screen, with Alistair Skinner)2001
(untitled)2002
The Island Bell
for the hygiene show (with Alistair Skinner) -
Artist works:
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Artist assets:
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Quotes:
"Kate Meynell (1954-, UK) examined notions of female subjectivity through the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship in two videotapes produced in the late 1980s - Hannah's Song (1987) and Medusa (1988).Meynell, explores her subjective perspectives on multiple levels in these tapes, simultaneously reflecting on the mythological, the symbolic and the socio-political. In discussing the themes and impetus of her work, she has claimed that it was 'the direct result of the confusion and paradoxes of my beliefs as a feminist'. Meynell's video work in this period was narrative-based; constructing 'empirical fictions', she explored the intricate intimacies and conflicts of birth and motherhood."
David Curtis (ed.) (1996) 'Kartherine Meynell', A Directory of British Film and Video Artists, Arts Council of England/ John Libby Media, Luton, p.126.
Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art, The Development of Form and Function. Berg, 2006.
