Kate Newby was born 1979, in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, and is currently living and working in Floresville, Texas, USA. Her sculptures forge an intimate and reciprocal relationship between artwork, architectural container, wider world and viewer. They often appear in the peripheries of a site, embedded within a building or public space or as links between points. Concrete puddles, handmade bricks, windchimes, window panes, murals and gutters at first appear quotidian but are intricately formed. These provoke an active, embodied looking that recalibrates one’s perception of an environment and the unseen beauty within, or at the edge of it. 

In 2012, Newby was awarded New Zealand’s premiere contemporary art award, the Walters’ Prize, by international judge Mami Kataoka. Her exhibition history includes major institutional projects across Europe, North America and the Pacific. Recent solo and two-person shows include Judy Millar & Kate Newby; Michael Lett, Auckland (2025); anything, anything, Klosterruine Berlin, (2024); Hours in Wind, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, Australia (2024); What a great year for music, Marfa Book Co, Marfa, Texas (2023); miles off road, Fine Arts, Sydney (2023); Had us running with you, Michael Lett, 3 East St (2023); Try doing anything without it, Art : Concept, Paris (2022); So close, come on, The Sunday Painter, London (2022); We are such stuff, Laurel Gitlen, NY (2022); Feel Noise, testsite, Austin (2022); SHE’S TALKING TO THE WALL, Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand, Wellington (2022); YES TOMORROW, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi (2021); I can’t nail the days down, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2018), and Let me be the wind that pulls your hair, Artspace, San Antonio (2017). 

Newby’s work has been included in international projects including the 16th Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2025); the 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018), the 1st Brussels Biennial for Contemporary Art (2008) and the Sao Paolo Biennale (2004). Her work has featured in group exhibitions at institutions including Le Forum, Ginza Maison Hermès, Tokyo (2024); Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, Texas (2023); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, (2023); Monte Castello di Vizio, Italy (2022); Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Auckland (2022) and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022).

Newby holds Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral degrees in Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. She lives and works in San Antonio, Texas, United States. 

Panel statement: “Kate Newby’s practice is a quiet revolution – an invitation to notice the overlooked, to feel the texture of the everyday, and to engage with space in radically tender ways. Working across sculpture, installation, and site-responsive gestures, Newby has developed a distinctive language that privileges subtlety, material intimacy, and poetic intervention. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Adam Art Gallery in Wellington, the Sydney Biennale, and a critically acclaimed solo presentation at the Kunsthalle Wien Karlplatz in 2018 in Vienna that deepened her reputation for transforming architectural environments into contemplative encounters.

Beyond her own practice, Newby has become a touchstone for a generation of younger artists who see in her work a model of integrity, experimentation, and generosity. Her commitment to process, her refusal of spectacle, and her ability to make space for others – both literally and metaphorically – have made her an influential figure in contemporary art. Whether casting footprints in concrete or embedding ceramic fragments into urban surfaces, Newby reminds us that art can be both radical and gentle, both ephemeral and enduring.” – Laureate Selection Panel 

Thank you to Corner Store for helping us tell these stories of impact – with filming in San Antonio, Texas by Walley Films.