Kay Abude is an artist living and working in Melbourne, Australia. Her creative practice engages many different forms of making, including sculpture, large-scale installation, performance, photography and silk-screen printing. Abude is fascinated with the nature of labour, with its economic, repetitive and somatic properties, and how work connects and separates us, taking so much of our time that it comes to define our lives. Abude is currently a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne 2019-2021.
Kay Abude completed a Master of Fine Art (by research) at the Victorian College of the Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne in 2010. She has received numerous awards and grants including a 2018 Vic Arts Grant from Creative Victoria and a 2018 HUME Arts Award. Abude was shortlisted for the prestigious 2014 Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture and was the recipient of the Professional Development Award and Civic Choice Award. She has also received a 2014 Vic Arts Grant, a 2013 Australia Council Art Start Grant and an Australian Post-Graduate Award to complete her masters degree in 2009-2010.
Recent exhibitions include the Megalo International Print Prize, Canberra, 2019; Castlemaine State Festival, Victoria, 2019; National Anthem, Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne, 2019; Wangaratta Contemporary Textiles Award, Victoria, 2019; For Love or Money, Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn Arts Centre, Hawthorn, 2019; Sunbury Cultural Commissions, Sunbury Art Gallery, Victoria, 2019; Projects at the Auckland Art Fair, New Zealand, 2018; and State of the Union, Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, 2018.
In June 2020 Abude received a Play King Foundation grant to participate in the Weaving Futures program at the Australian Tapestry Workshop, South Melbourne. Upcoming exhibitions include Dear Darebin: A Mail Art Project, curated by Boe-Lin Bastian, City of Darebin, 30 July - ongoing in 2020, WFH curated by Laura Couttie, Station Gallery, Sydney, 1 - 31 August 2020, and Stimulus Package curated by Madé Spencer Castle, FUSE Festival, City of Darebin, 31 August - 29 September 2020. Abude will be showing new work in her solo exhibition at Gertude Glasshouse, Collingwood, 19 November - 12 December, 2020, and in Gertrude Studios 2020, Gertrude Contemporary, Preston South, 20 November - 12 December 2020. Next year Abude will be exhibiting a new project as part of Asset Class: Melbourne Art Fair 2021 - Project Rooms, Melbourne, curated by Mark Feary, 4 - 7 February 2021.
