ABOUT
RuptureXIBIT (+ Studio, Art Mentoring & Coaching)
RuptureXIBIT is an inclusive, artist-run space located in Hampton Wick, London, home to Art Mentoring & Coaching workshops, intensive immersive Residencies, and experimental exhibitions. It offers a flexible exhibition space where artists can showcase experimental, unresolved work, engage across disciplines, and expand their practice in a non-hierarchical environment.
The space prioritises experimentation, creativity, and community, serving as a supportive lab for artists to push boundaries, try new things, and explore new ideas. Artists are encouraged to engage with failure as a necessary and welcome force in creative practice. RuptureXIBIT challenges the primacy of commodification as the driver of an artist's practice. Though we believe all artists should be paid for their work, we believe selling of work is a separate job from creating it.
Our passion and commitment is to the artist's development. Learning how to sell work is another aspect of the artist's life, and there are plenty of books and programs on how to get a gallery, and how to sell work. That is not the focus here. To sell work, one must have work to sell. Where does that work come from? Can we make more space between the making and the selling concepts? What is the work about? Why does it exist? Why did you need to make it? What is the impulse to make, where does it come from, why do you respond to it, what are you trying to say, what questions does your work ask?
This is what we are interested in - What are the conditions that allow the artist's work to arise vs what is the market telling artists they should make because it is popular?
We value practice, development of practice, and time with practice. We share our studio for work to emerge through space, time, and dialogue, offering artists a safe, non-competitive community to deepen and evolve their work. This development is sparked through practice which is examined and developed through Art Mentoring, Coaching and Immersive Intensive Residencies.
Over the past three years, the Rupture team has worked with over 1,000 international artists at all stages of their careers, providing a prolific platform for artistic growth and collaboration. We meet each artist where they need to be met, and provide the time, space, and rigor to examine and expand individual practices.
Here at RuptureXIBIT we specialize in separating the generative from the commodification of work and challenge hierarchical concepts around how we value work, whose work is valued, how we talk about work, whose opinion about work is valued, and in what way.
The ethos of Rupture is as follows: commodification and “like-ification” of art work on social platforms has muddied the artist’s brief. Those who are in search of the new are instead bathed in the dopamine stream of creating work which will garner more likes.
Unfortunately, we like that which we are familiar with, and so there is a “same-ification” occurring across painting at the moment. Rupture believes that one of the few benefits of the Covid pandemic was the complete disruption of the art world: we decided that a rupture had occurred, and in a rupture, the fullness spills out, everything mixes with everything, and boundaries dissolve.
We choose to stay boundary-free (as much as is possible). To that end, we work to remove financial risk from the artist, allowing them to experiment with showing work that they are unsure of. We discourage prices on our walls, and we are primarily not a shop, but a lab. As a lab (a spaceship, a clubhouse, a workout space) we are interested in artists who believe that the new lies outside of their comfort zone, and we offer a space to go there.
That said, we believe all artists can and should push and develop their practice. Pushing into the new for you may look very different than pushing into the new for someone else. We are interested in helping you unlock the keys to growing your practice wherever you are in the cycle. We are proud to show all kinds of art, from the conceptual to the traditional. Our concern is, again, not the aesthetics of your practice but that they, you, the concept of your show, and the boundaries of your practice are offered a safe space in which to push, grow, and experiment.
We have deep ties with the local community who continue to support our Artist's in Residence alongside our artistic community. We choose our Resident Artists based not on the aesthetics of the work but on the strength of creativity and the willingness to push and respond to space in an engaging way."
MEET OUR TEAM
Kate Howe (they/them)
Artist in Residence and Founding Director of RuptureXIBIT (+Studio)
Kate Howe is an American Artist living and working in London. Their work is the result of a research-based practice that examines relationships to self and others through the lens of longing, loss, power, and control.
As the founder of Kate Howe Studios and RuptureXIBIT, Kate is the person who stands watch over the excitement that occurs at the studio and gallery whilst they pursue their artistic goals.
Sally Minns (she/her)
Artist in Residency, Partner in Practice & Gallery Director
Sally Minns is a London-based Artist and has joined RuptureXIBIT as Kate’s Business Partner, bringing her creative and business experience to the team. Sally will increase the opportunities offered to emerging artists, which include affordable exhibition spaces, mentoring, and residencies.
Whilst growing RuptureXIBIT's links with the local community and London art world; pursuing her own creative practice.
