Oxmarket are excited to welcome Kate Thorpe to the Wilson Gallery who works as a mixed media, contemporary abstract artist while running her design business (Kate Britain) in Bosham, West Sussex.

Kate studied Art & Design at Worthing Art College, before going to London College of Printing (now UAL: University of the Arts London) for Graphic Design & Typography. Kate approaches her artwork in a variety of ways, often creating miniature versions of larger works, her preferred mediums include oil, acrilic, charcoal, pencil, collage and ink.

Kate’s background in graphic design and typography often draws her back to her computer, where she incorporates digital layering techniques. Her mixed media, contemporary abstract works combine materials, parodies of famous works, portraits, satire, quotes, photography, and found objects.

This black and white, new body of work has evolved very recently for Kate. Her pieces would normally have a bright and cheery colour palette. This work brings together the aesthetics of Punk, Street Art and Graffiti but in monochrome. Where once flyers were ripped, newspapers cut, lyrics scrawled and walls sprayed, nothing edited, nothing  approved; now has black bars, crossed-out emails, documents erased and missing footage.

Redaction is the modern language of control, words muted or removed to manage a new narrative.

The work responds by making the edit visible. These works treat censorship like street art but scribbled over, reworked, and exposed. What’s missing is the message beneath.

The more carefully something is managed, the louder its absence becomes. This work treats redaction as contemporary culture. Black bars function as a new movement.