Natasha Kidd

Since completing her MFA in painting at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1998 Natasha Kidd has exhibited her work widely throughout the UK.   Her first solo show Microswitch was at The Houldsworth Gallery, London. Group exhibitions have included New Contemporaries at the first Liverpool Biennale and The Beaconsfield Gallery, London, One Mile’s Time, Temple Bar Gallery Dublin, British Abstract Painting, Flowers East Gallery, London, Playing Fields, Laing Gallery, Newcastle and Wunderkammer, The Usher Gallery, Lincoln. 

 

Her practice involves the production of painting machines.  Most recent large-scale projects have included Rising Main at the Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham and Flow and Return at the Lowry, Manchester.  Natasha was the winner of the Celeste Art Prize in 2006. 

 

Natasha is a senior lecturer in Fine Art Painting at the school of Art and Design.  She is an associate lecturer on BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design and has taught as a visiting lecturer across disciplines at both undergraduate and postgraduate level at the University of Lincoln, Nottingham Trent University, Newcastle School of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art. 

 

Exhibitions and Research

 

Situated within an extended language of painting, my work involves the production of painting machines.   What I find most compelling in the process of painting is the action or event. The machines come out of an ambition to make this visible. Over time the roles and functions of the machines have developed. Critical to their production is a constant dialogue with experts who know how to “make them work”.

 

The Painting Machines (1998 – 2005) use a motor and timer to lower and raise a canvas into and out of a vat of white emulsion paint.  With each dip a new layer of paint adheres to the surface of the canvas.    Although products of a machine no two paintings have ever been the same. 

 

Painting Machine IV (1998-2005)

 

Painting Machine IV (1998-2005)

 

The more recent works Over Flow (2006) and Flow and Return (2006) use the structural practicalities of domestic plumbing.  Operating on a timer, paint is pumped through a system of copper pipes to a hidden reservoir within an aluminium panel.  As the reservoir fills, the paint overflows through holes cut in the aluminium surface.  Any residual paint is collected and fed back to start the journey again. 

 

Flow and Return, stopped (2006)

 

Flow and Return, stopped (2006)

 

Switched on and off at short intervals these works fill the space with the sound and smell of dripping, wet paint.   Over time, through evaporation and unpredictable changes in the paints consistency – bumps, ridges and stalactites form as layer after thin layer of paint accumulates. 

 

Celeste Art Prize (2006)

 

Celeste Art Prize (2006)

 

The works stop when the systems clog or run out of paint.  In preparation for installation they are rigorously designed but in their realisation things are constantly changing. The work is unpredictable yet it is within this unpredictability that my true fascination lays

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