Katherine Gili

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Born in Oxford in 1948, Katherine Gili graduated from Bath Academy of Art in 1970 then spent a year juggling earning a living with making sculpture in London. Having written to and then met with Anthony Caro she went on to study at St Martin’s School of Art on his recommendation. In 1973 she set up a studio at Stockwell Depot alongside a group of like-minded artists. The group established a reputation with a series of annual exhibitions throughout the decade, during which Gili’s work received considerable attention. So much so that sculptures from this period were purchased by the Arts Council at the time and later by the Tate. This also led to a solo exhibition in New York with several of Gili’s sculptures from this period now in private collections in the USA. In 1978 she moved to the Greenwich Studios and began to radically develop her work, which in turn led to exhibitions at Tate Gallery in 1984 and the Conde Duque Centre in Madrid in1988.

 

Katherine Gili’s sculpture has been exhibited in both solo and group shows well over a hundred times and her career is marked by contributions to seminal survey exhibitions at major venues such as the Hayward Gallery (three times) and the Henry Moore Institute. She has regularly shown in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions, in 2013 her sculpture “Ripoll” won the Sculpture Prize.

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Gili taught part-time at several art schools, most notably St Martins and Norwich and served as a selector for exhibitions such as “New Contemporaries 1978”, “Serpentine Summer Show 1979” and “Have You Seen Sculpture from the Body?” at Tate Gallery in 1984. She scaled back these commitments on moving to Kent in 1995.

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Gili’s work is represented in public and corporate collections in the UK, Switzerland, and the USA. Lord Foster selected one of her pieces to stand alongside the Cranfield University Institute of Technology Library in 1992. Her sculptures can also be found in many private collections in Britain, Spain, and the USA.

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Solo exhibitions

Summer Show 2; Serpentine Gallery 1977

Salander O’Reilly Gallery, New York 1981

Katherine Gili - A Career Survey; Poussin Gallery 2011

Artist of the Day; Flowers Central 2014

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Looking for the Physical, Sculpture and Drawings by Katherine Gili, Felix & Spear, London 2016 (download catalogue)

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Discovered in the Making, Katherine Gili Sculpture, Felix & Spear, London 2018 (download catalogue)

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Sparks Fly, Katherine Gili Sculpture 1974 to 2018, 14 Jan - 1 Mar 2019, Canary Wharf, London (download online brochure)

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Another Look - Sculptures from the 1980s by Katherine Gili, 15 Aug - 27 Sep 2020, Felix & Spear, London (download press release and catalogue)

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Selected group exhibitions

The Condition of Sculpture; Hayward Gallery, an international exhibition selected by William Tucker, 1975

Silver Jubilee Exhibition of Contemporary British Sculpture; Battersea Park 1977

Annual Stockwell Depot Exhibitions of Painting and Sculpture; 1974-79

Hayward Annual; 1979

Have You Seen Sculpture from the Body? Tate Gallery 1984

Escultura Nueva Reino Unido; Centro Cultural del Conde Duque, Madrid 1988

Moving Into View: a major display of the Arts Council Collection; South Bank Centre selected by William Packer,1993

British Abstract Art, Part 2, Sculpture; Flowers East Gallery, London 1995

British Figurative Art, Part 2, Sculpture; Flowers East Gallery, London, 1998

Steel; Canary Wharf, London, 2006

The Royal Academy Summer Shows 1996, 1997, 2009, 2013-16

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Awards

Elephant Trust 1994; Elected Fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors 1999; Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture, Royal Academy 2013

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Selected Public Collections

Tate Gallery, London; Arts Council of Great Britain; City of Lugano, Switzerland; Cartwright Hall, Bradford; General Electric Corporation, USA; Henry Moore Institute

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Private collections

The Leo and Eileen Herzel Collection USA; Several collections in Britain and Spain