Professor Catrin Webster PhD, Postgraduate Higher Dip Fine Art, UCL, BA Hons (Class 1) UCL

Professor of Fine Art Practice with significant responsibility for conducting research; supervision of Doctoral students (PhD) and Masters of Research students (MRes).

Catrin Webster exhibits internationally working on solo projects and in international collaborations. Her art practice addresses notions of both place and painting as performed, with a particular interest in time, gesture, movement and lived experience of space.

Catrin’s paintings are centred in the haptic and the materiality of painting from where she explores and expands the potential of painting through the digital; combining light, projection, the televisual and lens based media, together with choreography, sound and installation. Her paintings are held in national collections such as the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff and the Arts Council of Great Britain Collection, Hayward Gallery, London.

After studying painting as an undergraduate and postgraduate at the Slade School of Art, University College London, Webster returned to Cardiff to work as a teaching fellow in Fine Art, at Cardiff MET, she then established a studio in West Wales where she embarked on a series of large scale projects exploring notions of ‘Landscape’ though movement leading to a number of national and international solo exhibitions, touring for example, to  Sala Uno Rome, The Museum of Modern Art, Reykjavik and to Muscat, Oman. Over the next 25 years, Catrin moved between Wales and London, attaining a PhD from the University of Wales Aberystwyth, running workshops for galleries and museums, such as for the Tate Rooms exhibitions and working collaboratively with galleries to develop socially engaged projects such as the award winning Travel Project.

Webster has undertaken many residencies, including an Abbey Scholarship, at the British School in Rome, Leverhulme Artist in Residence at Exeter University, Resident Artist at the British Embassy Reykjavik and in Buenos Aires as part of the URRA international artists’ residency programme. From these international residencies, she has developed a network of collaborations, resulting in performances of paintings in the MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome and most recently at the Kunst Museum Munster 2019. She is currently working in collaboration with Roy Efrat, Berlin, developing video paintings, such as Arts Council of Wales funded, Pansy, exhibited in the Glynn Vivian Gallery 2020 and Passing shown in Art Lacuna, London.

Webster’s work was returned in the REFs 2014 for Swansea Metropolitan University as part of WIRAD and 2021 for UWTSD.

PhD and MRes supervision centred in Fine Art based subjects which include: Painting, Drawing, Lens based media and material, practice based approaches, with specialisms in place, space and ‘landscape’ theory.

Webster’s paintings form a praxis which engages understandings from Cultural Geography, Architecture, Anthropology and Archeology, together with continental philosophy and literature; Kafka, Wolf and Calvino, are of particular importance to her practice. She has worked in collaboration on Arts and Humanities Research Council funded initiatives such as 1000 Colours Blue as part of Beyond Text with Exeter University and Cross Pollination, an international collaboration resulting in an exhibition at Cornell University, USA. In 2019 she was made a Guest Lecturer at University of Munster, Germany.

Webster studied Fine Art at the Slade School, UCL at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, specialising in Painting. Her research and professional expertise is situated within the broad understanding of the ‘expanded field of painting’ where she explores relationships between, place and space; the performed and the lived, within the context of painting- action/object as architecture- action/object and visa versa.

In 2014, Webster was appointed a fractional lecturer at Swansea College of Art to lead the interdisciplinary Masters’ Portfolio through a period of exponential expansion. In 2015 she was also Programme Director for BA Fine Art and most recently, Swansea College of Art’s Research Degrees Manager. She has co-written several new programmes of study, including BA Fine Art: Studio, Site and Audience, Contemporary Dialogues 15 Pathway interdisciplinary Masters portfolio and a Master of Research (MRes) in Art and Design and MRes in Creative Learning, in collaboration with Education, UWTSD. In addition to her teaching and scholarship, Webster has worked with the University on validation panels and as the Partnership Team Leader for MA and Research Degree programmes at the Princes Foundation of Traditional Arts, London.

Webster has worked as a consultant and as a Lead Artist on several projects including AHRC funded projects. She has been an advisor to the Arts Council of Wales and is currently a Board member for Volcano Theatre.

Post devolution, Webster, along with Gwenllian Ashley (Curator Ceredigion Museum), were instrumental in the establishment of a Welsh Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, making a broadcast for S4C, commissioned by Hon. Webster and Ashely formed part of the first Arts Council steering group, attending La Biennale Di Venezia: An International Round Table Research Symposium, Venice in 2001, published in La Biennale Di Venezia: An International Round Table Research Symposium, conference proceedings, June 2001, Wimbledon School of Art, ISBN 0-948327-12-x

Exhibition Record:

2020-21 Trinity Buoy Warf Drawing Prize, London and touring UK

2020 Passing, Collaboration with Roy Efrat, Lacuna Gallery, London

2020 Pansy, Collaboration with Roy Efrat Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea

2019 1000 Colours Blue, installation and performance, Kunst Museum Munster, Germany

2019 Cross Pollination Project, Mann Gallery Cornell University USA

2018 Journey Books, as part of the international programme of the Being Human Festival of the Humanities 2018 ‘Origins and Endings’, at the British School in Rome

2017 Passages from the Travel Journal Rome, Old College Gallery, Aberystwyth University, solo show

2015 URRA group exhibition, Art Gallery Del Infinito, Buenos Aires

2014 ‘I Like This place I think I Will Stay’: Contemporary Landscape Painting, Aberystwyth Arts Centre

2014 Correspondence: Paintings in Response to R.S. Thomas, Plas Gwyn Y Weddw, Llyn, North Wales

2013 Lived Abstraction, Leverhulme residency exhibition, University of Exeter

2012 1000 Colours Blue, film/painting installation Swansea city centre in conjunction with BBC big Screens, choir performance, 1000 Colours Blue and Taliesin Art Centre, Swansea and Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow

2011 Artemisia, St David’s Hall, Cardiff

2010 Networking and Electronic Media European Summit, exhibition, invited artist, (NEM) Barcelona

Publications:

Webster, C, (2019) Resonant with Rebellion – recent works by John Abell, Planet Magazine, https://www.planetmagazine.org.uk/planet-online/237/catrin-webster

Webster, C, and Wylie, J, (2018) Eye opener: Drawing Landscape Near and Far, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tran.12267

Webster, C, (2018) A City of Making: Reflections on the Swansea Arts Scene, Planet Magazine, https://www.planetmagazine.org.uk/planet-online/232/catrin-webster

Webster, C, (2017) Not only Surface but Skin: BEEP International Painting Prize Planet Magazine, https://www.planetmagazine.org.uk/planet-online/224/not-only-surface-but-skin

 Webster, C, (2017) Policy Forum Wales, The arts and education - creative learning and cultural education in Wales, conference proceedings

Webster, C, (2016) Q-Art on Location & Art education, conference proceedings

Webster, C,  (2014) The journey and movement, repetition and time: Drawing within my visual practice, Journal of Visual Art Practice, Volume 11 issue 1 ISSN: 14702029 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/jvap.11.1.27_1

Meriman, P and Webster, C, (2009) Travel Projects: landscape, art, movement, Cultural Geographies, Volume 16, Number 4, pp 525 – 535, ISSN (print) 1474-4740 (Online) 1477-0881 http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/7955

Gallery education videos:

2019, Cornell University USA, AHRC Cross Pollination Project – (5 mins) 2016 National Eisteddfod – interview for Y Lle Celf– (10 mins)

2015, Tate Gallery, Artist’s Rooms: Robert Maplethorpe, Aberystwyth Arts Centre

2010, New European Media (NEM), Barcelona Spain

Television and radio broadcasts:

2011, BBC 2 Wales, Pembrokeshire Painted (30 mins) Catrin Webster, Presenter

2010, BBC Radio Wales, Radio Wales Arts Show, interview with Nicola Heywood

2006, S4C Byd o Liw Catrin Webster Interviewed by Osi Rees Osmond (10 mins)

2002, S4C Pedair Wal, interview – artist studio (10 mins)

2001, S4C, commission by Hon, Mark Wallanger interview, British Pavilion, Venice Biennale

1997, BBC 1 Wales, Breaking Though - A survey of the paintings of Catrin Webster and James Riley (30 mins)

Conferences Papers:

2019 PRESS PLAY: Creative Interventions in Research and Practice, invited speaker, British School in Rome

2018 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Being Human Festival of the Humanities 2018 ‘Origins and Endings’, invited speaker, British School in Rome

2017 Policy Forum Wales, Cardiff, Keynote Seminar: The Arts and Education - Creative Learning and Cultural Education in Wales, Cardiff

2015 Q-Art Symposium on Location & Art education, Swansea School of Art

2015 URRA in collaboration with Gas Works London, Fundacion PROA, Buenos Aires 2014 University of Cambridge, CRASH conference

2013 University of Oxford, Eye opener: plein air geographies of colour, light and shadow, John Wylie and Catrin Webster

2013 University of Bristol The Matter of Painting, John Wylie and Catrin Webster, Experimental Geography: Politics and Matter

2013 University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Learning to draw is learning to see: apprehending visual worlds otherwise, J. Wylie & C. Webster the Nordic Geographers Meeting

2013 Chelsea School of Art, Immanuel Kant, I Can, Motorbike Cultures, International conference, London

2012 Beyond Text AHRC, Final Festival,Kings Place, London

2010 International Forum - Five-Year Strategy panellist and advisor, WAI, Wales Arts International, British Council