Gallery Nyne: Just Who is Katie Lips?
In an age where many question if we can really fall and focus wholeheartedly on love, art and spirituality in the time of digital dominance, it’s worth noting that the relationship between technology and art is a parallel one, for a lack of better description. The former deserves due diligence for acting as the fundamental force in evolution of the latter, however the latter holds all praise for directing the final product. The work of contemporary artist Katie Lips, lies somewhere between the two. Known to ‘challenge technology start up culture’ and ‘the business of the digital’ , Katie works today as an artist who is not afraid to shop around for contemporarily rich references. Here are five things you need to know about the author behind a series of works that epitomise the modern-day individual mindset.
Disruption Rules OK: everyone’s at it in the world of tech; disrupting, that is.
They’re disrupting established ways of doing things, each other and themselves. Disruptors are heroes and disruption is king!
There’s not a lot of reflection in start-up-land; there isn’t time. Entrepreneurs are busy developing disruptive ideas, growing their business and ‘shooting for the moon’.
Whether changing the world or getting rich, you'd imagine startups behaved uniquely, and did things their thoughtful own way. I fear too many startups nowadays are eagerly following a well trodden path, a blueprint. They follow the rules and make people with money richer.
Where is the disruption in that?
It’s Personal: my work’s about challenging these would-be disruptors to think a little deeper.
I came to technology in the early 1990s. It was set to change everything. It did, and I helped it. A startup founder in my twenties, I’d left my career as an artist on hold for Web 2.0, Social Media, Co-working, Meet-ups, and making millions. I worked as an Entrepreneur, Social Media evangelist and Artist - hooking art into the early social web.
Today my work is based on my first hand experience of high-tech, fast-paced startups, striving to change the world for the better in one way or another. I am deeply fond of this world, as well as wishing to challenge it. I see the worlds of art and business as similar and connected.
To my business life I bring ‘thinking like an artist’, to my art I bring ‘office supplies’.
But Seriously: I occasionally describe my work as “Post Internet”
My work is sort of about the Internet. But I care little for the title. I might like to ‘disrupt’ Post Internet Art. Yes, my work responds to a world in which the Internet ‘has happened’, but everything post internet is by its nature, “post internet”. The most high-tech thing about my work it is a Post-It Note. That’s a lie of course, a I use various platforms to promote and sell my work. I’m on Instagram. I even tried Snapchat. But my practice is not specific to a medium.
I Am the Bootstrap Aesthetic: Visually, my work is punctuated by bold, poppy imagery, slogans and unfolding narratives. I’m keen to harness ‘the bootstrap aesthetic’. There’s a lo-fi / makeshift quality to the early days of what might turn out to be big businesses. The bootstrap aesthetic is part and parcel of startup culture; you can’t look too slick: exciting enough; poor but creative. It’s MacBooks and marker pens. The sticky notes in my work are not just about the embodiment of Agile in all forms - (no sticky = no startup) but are about the temporary nature of Startupland. They hang around. Sometimes longer than the businesses wrote their ideas and ambitions on them.
Thinking big is vital to growing as an artist
In March I had a pop up show at Jealous Gallery; “Surprised But Not Delighted”: technology startup culture; the value of ideas, the price of ambitions, and the promise technology makes to the hopeful. In April I exhibited at The Other Art Fair and focussed my show around recent work “Disruption Rules”.
I’m working on a series commissions and ‘stealth projects’ for later in the year, but would like to go large scale. Working across mixed-media collage, paint, video, performance, I might just as easily create a ‘business-as-an-artwork’. I want to put a startup in a gallery. I want to change the world with technology and art.
I’m moonshot, after all.
