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Katherine Finerty

@katherinefinerty

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📍 London | b. NYC
🎨 Independent Curator
💥 Recent: Tate | Pace | The Showroom
🎓 MA Royal College of Art
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Modupeola Fadugba: ‘The Chemistry of Water’ | The Royal Watercolour Society (RWS), London | 5th - 27th June, 2026 🧪 This solo exhibition of new and recent works by artist Modupeola Fadugba develops the RWS’s expansion of the boundaries of contemporary watercolour practice, and reflects Fadugba’s own investment in the materiality of her work. Rather than treating watercolour as a fixed set of materials, the show considers it as a set of behaviours: flow, absorption, resistance, and reflection. ‘The Chemistry of Water’ continues Fadugba’s wider practice — from Lagos and beyond — in which water operates both as subject and condition, shaping the movement of figures as much as the behaviour of materials. Acrylics are thinned and layered to act like watercolours, creating transparency and movement. Burnt surfaces alter the way pigment is absorbed. Beads interrupt and redirect its flow. Resist techniques hold space against it. 🌊 “It feels especially meaningful that this exhibition will take place in London, where I first encountered watercolour as a teenager. At the time, I understood watercolour as something complete in itself, gentle, observational, resolved. I could not have known then that I would return to that same medium years later, not to inherit it, but to stretch it, to test its limits, and to ask what it might become. Watercolour, as it is traditionally understood in England, carries with it a certain image: the artist seated outdoors, brush in hand, capturing a landscape in light washes. It is a medium associated with observation, with control disguised as fluidity. But water itself has never behaved this way. Water insists. It moves beyond instruction. It absorbs, disperses, reflects, and distorts. To be invited into a tradition is also to be asked what you will do with it, whether you will preserve it or push against it – with the works in ‘The Chemistry of Water’, I aim to do a little bit of both.” – @modupeola.fadugba 📆 Running 5 - 27 June, 2026 RWS Gallery, 3-5 Whitcomb Street, London WC2H Opening Hours: Tues - Sat | 11 - 5pm For all enquiries, please contact victoria@theartistsalgorithm.com taken in Royal Watercolour Society by @katherinefinerty
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4 months ago
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This is the last week to see The Chemistry of Water at the @rwsgallery. We close this a splash on Saturday. What a time, what a team🙏🏾 taken in Royal Watercolour Society by @katherinefinerty
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4 months ago
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What makes an Artist’s Studio? Is it a place of sanctuary or laboratory, organisation or mess, isolation or gathering? 🎨 One of the greatest privileges of working closely with artists as a curator is being invited to spend substantial time in these accessible yet sacred spaces. To observe, get your hands dirty, question, and dream. Throughout the past decade of collaborating with my dear friend and colleague Modupeola Fadugba, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time in many evolutions of her studio space. From temporary residencies in Brooklyn and Paris to permanent set-ups in Nigeria, I’ve been welcomed into a world of creativity and collaboration. Sometimes we lay alone on top of paintings, dreaming and scheming. Sometimes we test out a full exhibition design and invite colleagues to take a thematic deep dive. Sometimes we host parties with friends or just our parents. We pause, we play, and we revel in process. 💡 For all in London this June, you’re invited to enjoy an activation of the Artist’s Studio in Modupeola’s new solo exhibition ‘The Chemistry of Water’ at The Royal Watercolour Society. A curiosity cabinet of objects welcomes you to consider the design behind spaces of making, from paints to plants; books for researching the past to sketching the future. We invite you into a swimming pool meets alchemical laboratory, emblematic of the artist’s actual local studio where she teaches all of her assistants to swim outside, and holds scientific experiments inside. In recreating this simultaneously controlled and fluid space, the artist invites us to ask: “What might watercolour become if we allow it to behave like water itself, adaptive and resistant, and always in relation to the wider world around it?” 📆 Modupeola Fadugba: ‘The Chemistry of Water’ 
RWS Gallery, 3-5 Whitcomb Street, London WC2H 5 - 27 June, 2026: Tues - Sat | 11 - 5pm Private View: Friday 5 June, 5-8pm taken in Royal Watercolour Society by @katherinefinerty
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4 months ago
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Beaming next to my dear friends, artist Rashaad Newsome & filmmaker Johnny Symons; at BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival 2025 as an Impact Producer on the occasion of their international premiere of ASSEMBLY! So grateful for the many friends who celebrated with us in style and substance. 💖 I discovered Rashaad’s work 15 years ago in New York and his collage “Black Barbie” has been my phone background ever since. It was a dream come true collaborating together for the first time with Daata Editions in 2016 for the virtual exhibition “Reuse, remix, recode: Digital identity politics and the Power of PL►Y’ in 2016. From installations at the Ace Hotel in 2018 to a group exhibition at Gallery 1957 and open studio talk in Somerset House Studios in 2024, every project together expands my creative imagination and community. Since meeting Johnny and delving into the power of storytelling through film, I’ve loved becoming more deeply involved in the worlds of collective resilience you both create - and I am so deeply excited for what the future holds! 💫 “Through merging our distinct approaches, the film becomes an assembly of voices, histories, and visions, showcasing how art can serve as both a mirror to society and a tool for liberation. In capturing this process, we invite audiences to experience the profound impact of collective artistry and the boundless potential of reimagining the world through creative collaboration.” - Rashaad Newsome & Johnny Symons: Writers, Directors, and Producers of ASSEMBLY #AssemblyTheFilm 📸: Aarony Bailey @aaronybailey / @aaronyfilms by @katherinefinerty
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2 years ago
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ASSEMBLY: A film by Rashaad Newsome & Johnny Symons, 95min, USA 2025. Courtesy of The Film Collaborative. 🦾 ASSEMBLY follows visionary artist Rashaad Newsome as he transforms a historic military facility into a Black queer utopia, blending art, Al, and performance. Through stunning visuals and deeply personal performances, Assembly captures the transformative power of creativity as a fractured community comes together to find strength, solidarity, and liberation. 🔥 Thrilled to share @assemblythefilm is also on the move this Spring! The new feature doc is hitting festivals in many incredible cities in the coming weeks, reminding us all of the power of creativity, community, and individual & collective organising at this critical time. You are warmly invited to see the film & spread the word! 🚀 Salem Film Fest - Salem, MA Closing Night Film Sunday March 30th, 5:40pm Wicked Queer: Boston’s LGBTQ+ Film Festival Saturday April 5th, 2pm Patois: New Orleans Int’| Human Rights Film Festival Saturday April 5th, 6:30pm Q&A with @rashaadnewsome and @johnnysymons Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival Friday April 11th, 2:20pm Sunday April 13th, 7:25pm Hot Docs - Toronto, Ontario Canadian Premiere Tuesday April 29th, 5:15pm Friday May 2nd, 11am Q&A with @rashaadnewsome and @johnnysymons @_salemfilmfest @wickedqueer @patoisfilmfest @mspfilmsociety @hotdocs_@itvsindies @mellonfoundation #queerfilm #blacktranslivesmatter 📸: Park Avenue Armory photos by Keenan Newman / Being images by Rashaad Newsome Studio by @katherinefinerty
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2 years ago
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WE ASSEMBLED! Butterfly bling and best friends at BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival 2025 on the occasion of the international premiere and after-party for ASSEMBLY by artist Rashaad Newsome & filmmaker Johnny Symons! 🦋 It was such an honour to join my dear colleagues Rashaad & Johnny as an Impact Producer for their new feature-length documentary’s international debut in London, on the back of it’s premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas. At a time when oppressive structures seek to erase our stories, ASSEMBLY stands as a testament to Black queer resilience, imagination, and the radical power of community. This film is more than a screening – it is a call to action, a space for reflection, and a celebration of the worlds we are building together. 🖤 Thanks to all the friends, colleagues, and BFI Flare participants who joined us to celebrate in style & substance at 180 Lofts, and their wonderful team for hosting us. Looking forward to a bright future of more gatherings and endless world-building with you all! #BFIFLARE #AsssemblyTheFilm #RashaadNewsomeStudio 📸: Cover photo by Stephanie Berger / Event images by Aarony Bailey @aaronybailey @aaronyfilms by @katherinefinerty
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2 years ago
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Lois Selasie Arde-Acquah: “Echoes of Mundane Mindfulness” is having its last week on show at Gallery 1957 in Accra, up until 11 January 2025. It was an honour co-curating this solo exhibition with a hero colleague of mine, Ato Annan. Working with Lois taught us that repetition, when done mindfully, can lead to new ways of seeing and being, creating space for reflection, collaboration, and growth. 🕸️ Wake up. Studio. Eat. Map out, paint, draw, fill. Repeat. Loud music. Draw, cut, paint, dry. Flip, spread, paint, dry. Repeat. Eat. Map out, paint, draw, fill. Repeat. Cut, stitch. Plasters. Draw, cut, paint, dry. Repeat. Sing. Assemble. Eat. Stretch. Sleep. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Very mundane. Very mindful. Very magical.  🖋️ In “Echoes of Mundane Mindfulness”, we are immersed into a world where the delicate balance of drawing, painting, cutting, and sewing emerge as infinite composite patterns on paper and canvas. Her two-dimensional worlds are further brought to life through the artist’s large-scale installations and durational performances, creating immersive and ephemeral opportunities for Lois’s work to be intimately experienced by live audiences. In her performances, the physicality of cutting, stitching, and shaping becomes a spectacle of presence and endurance. 🦇 On the occasion of the opening, Lois activated her immersive installation with a durational performance, centred and flanked by her own pre-made angular marks that scale the walls. Across the span of 5 hours, audiences were welcomed to experience the artist’s painstaking creative practice transcend into a spectacle of stamina and radical presence. The leftover materials and energy remain in this geometric jungle, where you can intimately experience the artists’s repetitive process, listen to the rhythms and echoes of our daily gestures, and discover the transcendent power of mindful creation. The architectural rupture conjures the sense of a seismograph having justrecorded the aftermaths of an event that has shaken the Earth. Rebirth. Renewal. Repetition. It is a schism between life and art, between presence and what’s left behind. 📸: Nii Odzema @nfoningraphy taken in Gallery 1957 by @katherinefinerty
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2 years ago
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Lois Selasie Arde-Acquah, “Unfolding Fragments - III” (2024) Thread, canvas and acrylic paint, 89 x 89 cm. 🕷️ In Lois’s first solo exhibition at Gallery 1957 in Accra, “Echoes of Mundane Mindfulness”, we are immersed into a world where the delicate balance of drawing, painting, cutting, and sewing emerge as infinite composite patterns on paper and canvas. Her new body of work asks what if, instead of depleting meaning, repetition allows us to re-engage with ourselves and the world? The artist’s practice proposes that repetition, when done mindfully, can lead to new ways of seeing and being, creating space for reflection, collaboration, and growth. ✂️ In the context of art production, moreover, collective making and repetitive gestures have long been a strategy employed by artists to challenge perceptions. Arde-Acquah’s work resonates with this tradition, as her intricate patterns demonstrate how small, monotonous gestures can accumulate into something much more expansive. In “Unfolding Fragments - III”, intricate and black cut-out shapes are densely arranged on a white background, forming a dynamic visual field. Sharp, angular forms create a visual effect that feels both fragmented and unified, chaotic and controlled, evoking a sense of interminable movement. As the pattern expands, some sections become tightly packed, resembling organic clusters or abstract landscapes, while others break apart into smaller, scattered pieces. The contrast between positive and negative space, and the bold use of black and white, enhances the rhythm and tension. ⚡️ This evokes a sense of movement that is deliberate and harmonic, underscoring how recapitulation, though seemingly mundane, can produce complexity and depth. Is this fragmentation a mirror of our present lives, where repetition breaks our experiences into isolated moments? Or does it urge us to see how repetition can bring those pieces together, forming something greater than the sum of its parts? Each precise cut reflects not only the physical labour of Lois’s practice, but also her deeper investigation into repetition, flow, and the painstaking processes that define her worldview. 📸: Nii Odzema @nfoningraphy by @katherinefinerty
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2 years ago
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Lois Selasie Arde-Acquah: “Echoes of Mundane Mindfulness” is still on show at Gallery 1957 in Accra until 11 January 2025! I first encountered Lois’s work during my 1st visit to the phenomenal art school at KNUST in Kumasi in 2019, where our mutual friend artist Hassan Issah hosted me to a walk-through of all the student studios. Her studio installation has actually been left as is today, almost like a shrine to her powerful work & a living impact to how many artists she has inspired. It was an honour co-curating this solo exhibition with a hero colleague of mine, Ato Annan. 🖤 Under a black forest blanket made of more than 30,000 sheets of hand-cut paper, we’re welcome into the inner workings of Lois’s monochromatic mind. She seeks to reclaim the quiet power of repetition by elevating the seemingly mundane gestures of mark-making, cutting, and stitching. Her mesmerising works are both abstract and topographical, meditating on the intersections of time, labour, and resilience. These shapes, at once angular and organic, suggest that from the chaos of repetition, a new order may emerge. One that is fluid, expansive, and brimming with the potential of endless desire paths. 🧠 Through a rigorous studio practice rooted in collective care, the artist pushes the boundaries of what constitutes our individual selves and our enduring connection with the infinite. A multitude of hands have come together to create the many artworks and installations on display. Lois’s studio practice embodies how collaborative making can tangibly materialise more equal and sustainable ways of working and being. It is a production line of the most interpersonal nature. ✂️ I’d love to take the opportunity to acknowledge and thank the many makers behind Echoes of Mundane Mindfulness, including Richard Ahweren, Ebenezer Martey, Negyem Adonoo, Reuben Adomako, Solomon Martey, Brewer Roberts, Patrick Nii Adjetey, Prince ElormAfesi, Bernard Agoe, John Tetteh, Samuel Osardo, Justice Tsidzabekor, Emmanuel Osei-Boateng, Humphrey Abbey, Andrew Pierre Hart, Nuna Adisenu-Doe, Robin Riskin, Tatyana Kwabi, Chaze Matakala, Angelica Litta Modignani & Ato Annan, amongst others. 📸: Nii Odzema @nfoningraphy taken in Gallery 1957 by @katherinefinerty
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2 years ago
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Sarah Meyohas, “Interference #4” (2021) Hologram, mirrored glass. Featured in “Constellations Part 2: Figures in Webs and Ripples of Space”, Gallery 1957, Accra from August - October 2024. Meyohas’s multidisciplinary practice is rooted in the cross-pollination of nature and technology, experimenting with the endless potential of new realities to reflect on how we navigate through intersectional ecologies.  🌺 “In 2021 the artist initiated a series of traditional holograms titled ‘Interferences’. Her Studio has created the most technically sophisticated and largest holographic works in the history of the medium – is a technology that is completely analogue and archival. In hundreds of years, the holograms could be taken out, illuminated at the right angle, to recreate light waves in exactly the same way. Meyohas sees her holograms as lenses through which nature is glimpsed at. Glass is an ancient material that is ubiquitous in our contemporary technologies and the built environment. In these holograms, glass returns to us embodying interference patterns. 🪩 The subject matter of the holograms is simply plant matter; yet, these are highly textural close-ups that invoke sensations of viscera. Meyohas is investigating the phenomenology of sensory perception that is unique to each individual viewer depending on what they bring to the experience and their physical movements in real space and time—a journey that begins visually and subtly evolves into an embodied multi-sensory experience of orifices, spikes, and gelatinous textures.” - Sarah Meyohas Studio by @katherinefinerty
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2 years ago
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“Constellations Part 2: Figures in Webs and Ripples of Space”, was the 2nd part of sister-city exhibition between Gallery 1957 in Accra and London, co-curated Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson, Nuna Adisenu-Doe & Katherine Finerty. “Part 1: Figures on Earth & Beyond” (March - June 2024) turned towards ecofeminist Donna Haraway’s concept of the “Cthulucene” asking: how can we re-examine art historical, spiritual, and science fictional representations of figures in a landscape through a lens of empathy and interconnection? Part 2 continued the research-based vision of Constellations as a platform to collectively imagine new futures, referencing philosopher Timothy Morton’s ideology of co-existence in Dark Ecology. 🚀 “Figures in Webs and Ripples of Space” conjured the spirit of Ananse, the Akan creator spider god, to weave audiences in stories like webs connecting humans with nature as beings of repute that speak to each other; shaping us, teaching us, and ridiculing us even. Coexistence, however, does not automatically imply harmonious and peaceful relations, but rather a dialectical balance with the paradox of existential crisis. We get estranged in a techno-alternative universe of machines aiding our every move, viruses exerting influence on economies, plastics melding into geology and our blood, and so on. Many of the artists in Part 2 play with African mythology to reimagine worlds beyond the human - sensible, actual, coherent, and terrestrial. The artists in this exhibition connect and rupture relations through a constellation of machines, plants, religious or mythical objects, memorabilia, and all forms of objects that connect and estrange us. ✨ Artists included: Clifford Bright Abu, Abdul-Salam Alhassan, Akosua Odeibea Amoah-Yeboah, Dela Anyah, Lois Selasie Arde-Acquah, Dzidzor Azaglo, Elolo Bosoka, Phoebe Boswell, Jasper Dafeamekpor, Rosemary Esinam Damalie, Adelaide Damoah, Victor Ehikhamenor, Denyse Gawu-Mensah, Henry Hussey, Samuel Baah Kortey, Rebekka Macht, Afrane Makof, Sarah Meyohas, Putin Ofori, Frederick Ebenezer Okai, Jonathan Okoronkwo, Na Chainkua Reindorf, Ghizlane Sahli, Lisa C Soto, and Nyahan Tachie-Menson. 📸: Nii Odzema @nfoningraphy by @katherinefinerty
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2 years ago
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“Constellations Part 2: Figures in Webs and Ripples of Space” in Accra from August - October 2024 was the 2nd part of the sister-city exhibition between Gallery 1957 in the UK & Ghana that I had the honour to co-curate with the magnificent Nuna Adisenu-Doe & Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson. 🌿 Part 2 continued the research-based vision of Constellations as a platform for experimentation and knowledge-sharing to collectively imagine new futures. It distinctly re-examined the way we understand the place of humans in the world, to challenge us into rethinking ecology without essentialist narratives of ‘nature’. As American ecologist and philosopher Timothy Morton poses in his 2009 book “Ecology without Nature”, it asked can we rethink our sense of place and not get too comfortable with ‘nature’ in all its passive, normative, and hierarchical structures imposed by humans? It strove to create an interconnected portal from Part 1 in London, focussing on immersive site-specific installations through a West African mythological lens to extend our enduring, interconnected earth story. Each artist’s inquiry about the notion of our interconnectedness was in dialogue with others’ pursuit to decentre ourselves, radically reimagining human and nonhuman inhabitation. 🤖 Artists participating in this group show included those collaborating with the gallery for the first time; Clifford Bright Abu, Abdul-Salam Alhassan, Akosua Odeibea Amoah-Yeboah, Dela Anyah, Dzidzor Azaglo, Elolo Bosoka, Jasper Dafeamekpor, Rosemary Esinam Damalie, Victor Ehikhamenor, Samuel Baah Kortey, Rebekka Macht, Afrane Makof, Putin Ofori, Frederick Ebenezer Okai, Na Chainkua Reindorf, Ghizlane Sahli, and Nyahan Tachie-Menson, as well as long-term collaborator Jonathan Okoronkwo and artists who participated in Constellations Part 1; Lois Selasie Arde-Acquah, Phoebe Boswell, Adelaide Damoah, Denyse Gawu-Mensah, Henry Hussey, Sarah Meyohas, and Lisa C Soto. 📸: Nii Odzema @nfoningraphy by @katherinefinerty
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2 years ago
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