Details:
① Artwork:
Get into my Rainbow
This watercolor painting depicts the artist’s wife, Jina Khayyer, standing in the middle of a rainbow. When the pair visited a waterfall in Yosemite National Park in the United States, they found the base of the falls filled with mist. When the sun shines through the trees, this mist can create a perfectly circular rainbow around your body. The idea of an enveloping rainbow stuck with the artist.
In this painting, the rainbow becomes a symbol of happiness—a path to prosperity or a pot of gold, as well as a queer symbol. Groobey adds the text ‘Get into my rainbow’ to the composition, something the artist said when she noticed the Yosemite rainbow around her waist. There is another version of this work, a counterpart that inverts the meaning of the text and reads, ‘Get out of my rainbow’—as if to say, "don’t ruin my vibe."
Kate Groobey's work encompasses drawing, painting, live performance and video. Each of her compositions explores one of her personal experiences, depicting moments from her relationship with her wife. Groobey's work explores the androcentric canon of painting from a feminist and queer perspective. By employing the tactics of British humor—including innuendo, parody, absurdity, surreality, macabre and self-deprecation—Groobey offers up punchy depictions of the human condition.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Kate Groobey’s work depicts personal and intimate moments from her relationship with her wife, the writer Jina Khayyer. Encompassing drawing, painting, live performance and video, the artist’s work explores the androcentric canon of painting from a feminist and queer perspective. Groobey’s work uses the tactics of British humor—innuendo, parody, absurdity, surreality, macabre and self-deprecation—to create punchy depictions of the human condition.
BIO:
Kate Groobey was born in Leeds, UK in 1979. The artist received a BFA from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University in Oxford, UK and an MFA in painting from the Royal College of Art in London, UK.
Solo exhibitions of Groobey’s work have taken place at: Sean Horton (Presents) in New York City; Sim Smith in London, UK; RIBOT in Milan, Italy; and David Lynch’s Club Silencio in Paris, France.
Group exhibitions that have shown Groobey’s work have taken place at: König Galerie in Berlin, Germany; New National Museum in Gdansk, Poland; La Sira in Paris, France; and the Villa Lena Foundation in London, UK; among others.
Groobey’s work has been discussed in i-D/vice, New York Arts Magazine, and Dapper Dan Magazine, among others. The artist has also been included in the publications 100 Painters of Tomorrow (2014) and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries catalog (2011).
Groobey has received awards from the Arts Council England, the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize, and the Royal College of Art in London, UK.
Groobey lives and works in London, UK and Paris, France.
