Katrina Moorhead (b. 1971) is a Houston-based artist whose elegant drawings, objects, and installations focus on the hidden, seemingly ordinary, or vulnerable aspects of experience, transforming them into extended moments of beauty and heightened awareness. With a delicate and spare hand, she casts the familiar anew, poetically translating the world into a meditative realm where objects’ relationship to nature and reality are probed.
She will create new works in various media for the Arthouse exhibition.
On Or About December 1981
2006
Basswood, plywood, wood glue, screws
16 x 56 x 45 inches
Sampled Sky
2004
Printed billboard image
25 x 12.5 feet
KATRINA MOORHEAD
CURRICULUM VITAE
Born in Colerain, Northern Ireland, in 1971; lives and works in Houston.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2007
* a thing called early blur, Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, TX
* Low-Slung Clouds, Gallery Side 2, Tokyo, Japan
2006
* a pretty girl that this man does not love her, Inman Gallery, Houston, TX
2005
* an island as it might be, Artpace, San Antonio, TX
2002
* Ideal Total Now, Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX
* Stutter, Project Room, San Antonio, TX
1998
* Katrina Moorhead, Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX
1997
* Katrina Moorhead, Lynn Goode Gallery, Houston, TX
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2006
* Fantastic Frameworks: Architectural Utopias + Designs for Life, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada
* Texas 100: Selections from the El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX
* Sincerity, Finesilver Gallery, San Antonio, TX
* Sparkle, Gallery Side 2, Tokyo, Japan
* Extra-Ordinary, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, TX
2005
* The Nature of Things, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland
* A Thousand Words, Inman Gallery, Houston, TX
* Originality and Repetition: The Grid in Contemporary Works on Paper, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
* The Nature of Things, Instituto Provinciale Per L’Infanzia, Santa Maria della Pieta, 51st Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
* Things Fall Apart, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, IL
2004
* Billboard Project, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX
* Floral Graffiti: The future is empty, easy to convince, and ours (Collaboration with Maggie Hills), Offsite Projects, Reg Vardy Gallery, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, England
* Twang: Contemporary Sculpture from Texas, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX
* Going West, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, TX
2003
* Way to Blue, Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX
* Multiples x 7, Project, Dublin, Ireland
* Greyscale/CMYK, in association with the Nordic institute for Contemporary Art/Network North, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland
2002
* Greyscale/CMYK, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland
* Summer Drawings, Mixture Contemporary Art, Houston, TX
* New Additions to the Altoids Curiously Strong Collection, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY
2001
* Space: Sculptor’s Drawings, Drawings About Sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
* Out of Sorts, Perspectives 2001, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland
* Brad Tucker, Ludwig Schwartz, Katrina Moorhead, Francesca Fuchs, Inman Gallery, Houston, TX
* The Munchie Munchie, DiverseWorks, Houston, TX
2000
* Thrifting, Lombard-Fried Fine Arts, New York, NY
RESIDENCIES
2006
* SIM Gueststudio–Association of Icelandic Visual Artists, Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland
2005
* International Artist-in-Residence (IAIR) Program, Artpace, San Antonio, TX
1996-98
* Core Artist-in-Residence Program, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
SELECTED AWARDS
2006
* Short-listed and Special Mention, Irish American Arts Awards, New York
* Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Grant, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
2003
* General Arts Award, Arts Council for Northern Ireland
2001
* General Arts Award, Arts Council for Northern Ireland
1998
* Eliza Randall Prize, Core Artist-in-Residence Program, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
BIOGRAPHY
Mixed-media sculptor and installation artist Katrina Moorhead was born in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, in 1971 and attended school at the Edinburgh College of Art, completing a BA degree in art and art history in 1994 and an MFA degree in sculpture in 1996.
After a handful of early showings throughout the United Kingdom, Moorhead participated in the prestigious Core Artist-in-Residence Program at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from 1996 to 1998. The dramatic change of scenery embodied by the sprawling urban development of Houston would influence her work considerably, as she became fascinated with the concept that “everything we do is incongruent with the natural world.”
Since then, Moorhead’s work has often searched for a common ground between the human and the natural through sculpture, installation, and drawings. In her Sampled Sky (2004), a wryly selected Clear Channel billboard in Houston becomes a canvas for a grid of 33 enlarged Martha Stewart brand, sky-themed paint samples. An attractive image in its own right, the work serves to elevate the billboard beyond its standard role as an obstructive commercial image to become something like a sundial, where at any point of day at least one of the tiles will be perfectly harmonious with the sun.
In 2005 Moorhead participated in the Northern Ireland Pavilion at the 51st International Venice Biennale. Her contribution, entitled On or about December 1981, reflects back to the opening of the short-lived DeLorean sports car factory in Belfast. Coming in the midst of an era of rampant ethnic strife and unemployment, the factory served as a unifying presence in the region. With the myriad fiscal and political problems leading to DeLorean’s very quick collapse, the factory served as a fleeting vision of a better future for the people of Belfast. Moorhead pays tribute to the era by recreating the iconic “gull wings” of the DeLorean, crafting them from wood and laying them next to each other on the floor, exemplifying the promise or potential of what might have been.
Moorhead has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, TX; Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX; Artpace, San Antonio, TX; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; and Gallery Side 2, Tokyo, Japan.