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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