Katie Paterson (born 1981) is a Fife-based visual artist from Glasgow, Scotland, having previously lived and worked in Berlin whose artworks concern translation, distance, and scale. Paterson holds a BA from

Edinburgh College of Art Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) is one of eleven schools in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Tracing its history back to 1760, it provides higher education in art and design, architecture, histor ...

(2004) and an MFA from the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

(2007), she is an

Honorary Fellow Honorary titles (professor, reader, lecturer) in academia may be conferred on persons in recognition of contributions by a non-employee or by an employee beyond regular duties. This practice primarily exists in the UK and Germany, as well as in m ...

of the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

(2013).

Work

Paterson has done several projects relating to melting glaciers; her graduation piece for art school, ''Vatnajökull (the sound of)'', featured a mobile phone number connected to a microphone submerged in a lagoon beneath Europe's largest glacier. Related work includes ''Langjökull, Snaefellsjökull, Soheimajökull,'' in which the soundscape of melting glaciers was created by making LPs from ice consisting of glacier meltwater. In one project she created a map of 27,000 known dead stars. In ''History of Darkness'' Paterson presents the viewer with a multitude of images in the form of 35 mm slides that the viewer is invited to pick up and view in good light. They are labeled as to the disparate points in the universe from which they are photographed. And indicated on each is the distance in

light-years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

from that point in the sky to Earth. They are images of darkness, and they are all virtually the same. She has had solo exhibitions at

Modern Art Oxford Modern Art Oxford is an art gallery established in 1965 in Oxford, England. From 1965 to 2002, it was called The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. The gallery presents exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. It has a national and internationa ...

Kettle's Yard Kettle's Yard is an art gallery and house in Cambridge, England. The director of the art gallery is Andrew Nairne. Both the house and gallery reopened in February 2018 after an expansion of the facilities. Kettle's Yard galleries, shop and caf ...

Cambridge, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre,

Selfridges Selfridges, also known as Selfridges & Co., is a chain of high-end department stores in the United Kingdom that is operated by Selfridges Retail Limited, part of the Selfridges Group of department stores. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridg ...

, London, BAWAG Contemporary, Vienna, Haunch of Venison, London, PKM, Seoul., Turner Contemporary, and Ingleby. Paterson was the winner of a

South Bank Sky Arts Award The South Bank Sky Arts Awards (originally The South Bank Show Awards) are an accolade recognizing British achievements in the arts. The awards have been given annually since 1997. They originated with the long-running British arts programme ' ...

in 2014. and a

Leverhulme Fellow The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1925 under the will of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), with the instruction that its resources should be used to suppo ...

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. In July 2014, she sent an artwork into space, to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

aboard

ESA , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...

Georges Lemaître ATV The ''Georges Lemaître'' ATV, or Automated Transfer Vehicle 5 (ATV-5), was a European uncrewed cargo spacecraft, named after the Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaître. The spacecraft was launched during the night of 29 July 2014 (23:44 GMT, ...

(ATV-5). In August 2014, to widespread acclaim, Paterson launched the Future Library project (NO:Framtidsbiblioteket), a 100-year-long artwork in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...

Nordmarka Nordmarka is the mostly forested region which makes up the northern part of Oslo, Norway. Nordmarka is the largest and most central part of Oslomarka. The area called Nordmarka also extends into the municipalities of Hole, Ringerike, Lunner, Je ...

forest and new Deichman Public Library and announced Margaret Atwood as the first writer. Other writers include: David Mitchell, Sjón,

Elif Shafak Elif Shafak ( tr, Elif Şafak, ; born 25 October 1971) is a Turkish-British novelist, essayist, public speaker, political scientist and activist. Shafak writes in Turkish and English, and has published 19 works. She is best known for her ...

, and

Han Kang Han Kang (; born November 27, 1970) is a South Korean writer. She won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2016 for ''The Vegetarian'', a novel about a woman's descent into mental illness and neglect from her family. The novel is ...

. She was included in the

Towner Gallery Towner Art Gallery is located in Eastbourne, East Sussex, on the south coast of England. It hosts one of the most significant public art collections in the South of England and draws over 100,000 visitors a year. It was described by ITV News ...

(Eastbourne) ''A Certain Kind of Light'' exhibition showing from 21 January to 17 May 2017. Turner Contemporary hosted a major retrospective of all Paterson's artwork in 2019, and launched a new book ''A place that exists only in moonlight'', printed with cosmic dust.

Awards

* First artist-in-residence in the Astrophysics Group within

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

(UCL) Physics & Astronomy *

2014 for visual art * Leverhulme Fellow, University College London *

of the

(2013) * Spirit of Scotland Award 2014

References

External links

Katie Paterson's official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paterson, Katie 1981 births Living people 21st-century Scottish women artists Alumni of the Edinburgh College of Art Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Artists from Berlin Artists from Glasgow Scottish contemporary artists Scottish expatriates in Germany