ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Altered Books, maps and texts
Kate uses a scalpel to cut paper by hand and create 3-dimensional forms that explore paper as a normally ‘unseen’ material. She alters documents and books as a way of considering our understanding of paper’s role in communicating information and to facilitate an exploration of individual and collective memory.
Our physical interaction with paper documents and books is a key part of how we experience her work. The alteration of recognisable cultural documents, that ordinarily call for the viewer to place themselves within them, enables her to explore personal experiences within a collective context. The viewer is presented with familiar, yet unfamiliar, information leading them to make their own associations and take their own journeys.
A sense of time is embedded in her work; from the date of a document’s original publication to the deeper sense of time of the making process. The surface of paper becomes imbued with traces of the environment and the touch of human hands, acquiring a ‘patina’ that is a trace of this experience. These residual ‘memories’ of lived experiences are an intrinsic part of any work made from them, but will remain unknown and unknowable; absent while remaining present.
Her work with paper maps, in which she removes all but the barest information, explores our sense of place and the way in which we interpret information on the page, while in a series of altered books she creates 3-dimensional forms from the pages and cuts redacted poetry from the words. The words lead the viewer around and through the form, creating new stories from the original text and addressing the rules of the page, language and her own practice.
More recent work with the handwritten word—meticulously cutting old letters from paper—not only examines her personal family history but also our move away from handwriting as an engaged form of communication towards a more immediate, transitory, digital communication. Married with the central tenet of her practice—paper—this raises questions of longevity, significance, materiality and impermanence.
Influenced by many contemporary Paper Artists, including Barbara Wildenboer and Thomas Demand, Kate’s work addresses themes from personal experiences to environmental concerns, underpinned by a fascination with paper as a material.
Kate graduated in Visual Arts: Drawing from Camberwell College of Arts in 2003. In 2020 she completed an MFA with Distinction and is currently researching for a part-time PhD by Practice.
Kate’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Wells Art Contemporary and the Viviane Fontaine International Paper Triennial in Switzerland.
Layered Papercuts
Kate works with paper, cutting intricate designs by hand to create layered images of landscapes and architecture. She uses areas of colour to simplify the image and often includes an intricate detail such as a building to draw the eye. Depth and perspective are created by numerous layers of paper assembled together and careful composition.
Her work explores the possibilities of working with paper as a material; how it changes as it is cut into intricate patterns and how the play of light on the surface and cut edges creates shadows. She particularly enjoys the simplicity of the material and our familiarity with it; we all have an innate understanding of paper and its’ uses and it is interesting to challenge this familiarity.
EDUCATION
2021 - present Oxford Brookes University, part-time PhD by Practice, Fine Art
2019 – 2020 Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, MFA Fine Art (distinction)
2003 – 2004 University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, PGCE: Secondary Art and Design
2000 – 2003 Camberwell College of Arts, London, BA (Hons) Visual Arts: Drawing (2:1)
TALKS
2023
Paper Alive (and Talking Back!)
IAPMA Annual Congress
Dresden
Poetry Under the Knife: Altering Texts Through Papercutting
Paper and Poetry Symposium
The Centre for Material Texts, Cambridge University and The Paper Foundation, Kendal
Artist Talk
Art Sauce
Oxford
PUBLICATIONS
Hipkiss, K. (2025) “Creating Spaces: Redacted Poetry Through Papercutting,” Critical Quarterly. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/criq.70009.
Charity Calendar, Paper Artist Collective, 2025
Paperart Calendar, Schluenung Publishing House, Germany, featured artist, 2023
The Oxford Art Book, 2 featured papercuts, 2018
MEMBERSHIPS
IAPMA (International Association of Paper Makers and Artists)
CURRENT ROLES
Board Member, Oxfordshire Artweeks
