Kate Burling (b.1998, Reading) lives and works in South London. Since graduating from Camberwell College in 2022, she has completed residencies with Goodeye projects, Pictorum Gallery and the Sandro Moretti Foundation in Umbria. In the past year and a half, she has exhibited at Christies, Guts Gallery, Soup gallery, Fiumano Clase and Nosbaum Reding, and has most recently presented her third solo show ‘Softness as a Torrent’ at Ronchini, London.
Burling’s work explores the tension between the ephemerality of life and the certainty of death. Through navigating the impact of sharp externalities on a soft core, Burling alludes to narratives of biblical disaster, climate collapse and the rituals we might turn to in order to maintain sanctuary within our bodies. In much of her work the artist applies paint to the canvas with her fingers and the palms of her hands, thus blurring the distinction between herself and the subject. Burling’s gestures, which oscillate between tender caressing, anxious rubbing, tapping and scratching, imbue the paintings with direct access to both the artist’s physicality and evolving feelings towards herself and the external world.