Katie Tomlinson

Man holding a woman up inside an oven. The image is fiery red.

Katie Tomlinson (b. 1996, Teesside) is an artist, researcher, and Lecturer in Painting, based in London and Manchester. Tomlinson recently completed an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, supported by the Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award (2021/23). In 2018, she graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Manchester School of Art.

Recent solo exhibitions include At Least Buy Me Dinner First, Brooke Benington, London (2022/23) and Fight the Moon, Paradise Works, Manchester (2021/22). Tomlinson has also participated in significant duo and group exhibitions, including Buried in Affection, Galerie Supermarkt, Tokyo (2022); Fayre Share Fayre, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2022); Stories, Bankley Gallery, Manchester (2022); A star is just a memory of a star, Brooke Benington, London (2022); RAW, Soho Revue, London (2022); Obstructions, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2021).

In addition, Tomlinson has received various awards and residencies, including the Zabludowicz Collection Master Class with artist tutors Doug Fishbone, Sir Isaac Julien, Emma Talbot, Ryan Gander and Julia Scher (2021); Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant (2021); The Sir Richard Stapley Education Trust Grant (2021); The Essential School of Painting Artist Scholarship, ESOP, London (2020); Developing Your Creative Practice Arts Council England Grant (2020), Time, Space, Money Bursary, a-n The Artists Information Company (2020); The University of Salford Spring/Summer Commission (2020); Artists’ International Delegation to Denmark – Copenhagen & Aarhus, granted by Castlefield Gallery and a-n (2019).

In 2023, Louisa Buck held an in-conversation event with Tomlinson at Brooke Benington Gallery, during which they discussed her solo exhibition, At Least Buy Me Dinner First.

“I can’t believe Katie Tomlinson is still at the RCA! ‘At Least Buy Me Dinner First’ at Brooke Benington is such a rich, assured, accomplished solo show – that also has fantastic energy and so much going on. Private moments, intimate acts filtered through a rich brew of art history – and boy, can she paint!”

– Louisa Buck (Editor of The Art Newspaper and previous Turner Prize jurist)

To request an available works list contact: katietomlinson100@gmail.com

A photograph of the artist in her studio

Katie Tomlinson’s paintings reflect on the united experiences of women and focus on the intricate dynamics of human connections. Ideas surrounding power structures and vulnerability; nuances of consent, exchange, and desire; heteronormativity and performative femininity; and the politicisation of intimacy recur throughout her practice.

Through the adoption and utilisation of Bertolt Brecht’s Alienation Effect, Tomlinson invites viewers to perceive the familiar as strange, prompting them to become conscious, critical observers of the narratives unfolding throughout her pictorial imagery. Using vivid colour, playful and surreal motifs, absurdity, symbolism, and varying applications of paint, the works are imbued with tension, concealed messages, and fluctuating tempos. Tomlinson’s paintings serve as both an exploration into the medium and the figures in which inhabit the frame. These figures demand further exploration, inviting questions about their identities, actions, motivations, and relationships with one another.

Tomlinson’s paintings overtly reference moments throughout the canon of Western, patriarchal, art history. She reconsiders, reconfigures, and reclaims specific moments from Painting's problematic past. Harbouring this as a tool to enhance, develop, and reinforce her paintings’ contemporary social themes within a post-MeToo era.