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Janette Kerr RWA

Janette Kerr is a painter deeply embedded in place, working at the interface between land, sea, and historical experience. For the last 15 years she’s focussed primarily on Shetland and the far north, traveling extensively to wild sea and weather-scoured places. Residencies include Norway, Svalbard and Greenland. Integral to her working process is immersive experiences of observing and experiencing changing land/seas, physical and meteorological shifts. Walking and making work en plein-air, responding to sound and movement within landscape, is a prelude to making studio-based work.

Consideration of the relationship between drawing and the phenomenological experience of place/landscape. My drawings encompass discussions with oceanographers, narratives, and dynamism of the sea. Such encounters - this ‘deep research’ - provide a kind of ‘polyvocal’ aspect to my work. I draw in landscapes replete with history and memories; people moving through, geological changes, forces of nature, suggesting a mutability of place.

Maybe we should consider drawing as a collaborative act – an engagement in dialogue between place and artist? What does my act of drawing bring to my understanding of places I encounter? I bring with me a body of knowledge, perhaps about what happened here, our impacting upon the environment, knowledge of how to make marks, how to use materials. Does this impact upon what and how I draw?

I draw to fix a sense of a place in my head, responses made by continual obsessional scrutiny, from in-attention, furious mark-making. Drawing’s virtue is that it’s unstable and fluid. Balanced between abstraction and representation, it can be highly controlled, delicate, automatic, chaotic, a wild act, responses to chance encounters with materials. Made in situ, there’s a kind of performative aspect to my drawing – between me and sea and weather. We might consider how it situates the viewer - do my drawings brings different or further understanding of a place? They certainly draws attention to it. And when do/can I become the viewer?

An active member of Walking the Land, initiating collaborative projects – photographic, video and sound - often involving historical research and walking. She has curated several major exhibitions involving historical and contemporary artwork, including symposiums, programmes of talks and art events.

 

Contact Information

website: https://www.janettekerr.co.uk
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janettekerrstudio
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JanetteKerrRWA
artist profile: https://www.visualartsscotland.org/artist-biography/1155/janette-kerr

Honorary Titles

Honorary Academician, Royal Scottish Academy
Royal West of England Academician
President of the Royal West of England Academy of Art (2011–2016)

Education

2005 PhD (Practice-based, Fine Art), University of the West of England
1999 Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art, University of the West of England

Residencies

2023 Arctic Culture Lab – Oqaatsut/Iullisaat, Greenland (Creative Scotland funded)
2020 NES Skagaströnd, Iceland
2016 Arctic Circle Expedition Residency – Svalbard
2012

  • Meteorological Institute, Bergen, Norway

  • Brisons Veor, Cape Cornwall
    2010 The Booth, Shetland (February & October)
    2006, 2008, 2009 Cill Riallaig, International artists & writers retreat, South Ireland
    1999 In House: making & installing night works in two domestic houses, Bath Fringe Festival
    1997 Grizedale Forest Art Fellowship, Cumbria
    1996 Llangatwg Comprehensive School, Neath Valley (Arts Council of Wales funded)

Solo Exhibitions

2025 Kilmorack Gallery, Inverness-shire
2024 Virtual The Shed Gallery exhibition – featured artist
2023 Clifton Contemporary Gallery, Bristol
2022

  • Pittenweem Art Festival – invited lead artist

  • Sladers Yard Contemporary Gallery, Bridport, Dorset
    2021 Kilmorack Gallery, Inverness-shire
    2020 Cadogan Contemporary, London
    2018

  • Slader’s Yard Gallery, Bridport

  • Kilmorack Gallery, Inverness-shire

  • Cadogan Contemporary, London
    2017 Arctic Air: an absolute difficult beauty, RWA Academicians Gallery, Bristol
    2016 An Uncontrollable Force, Cadogan Contemporary Gallery, London
    2015

  • Paintings from the Sea, Cadogan Contemporary Gallery, London

  • New Work from Shetland, Kilmorack Gallery, Inverness-shire

  • Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour

Group / Invited / Projects

2025

  • Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize touring exhibition

  • Shetland Gallery, Yell, Shetland

  • Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh

  • International Festival of Terminalia (https://walklistencreate.org)

  • Lines of Enquiry, Hardwick Gallery, Cheltenham

  • Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour Annual Exhibition, Mall Gallery, London

2018–2025

  • Royal Scottish Academy Annual, Edinburgh

  • Paper Works, RWA, Bristol

2024

  • Trinity Wharf Drawing Prize Exhibition, London

  • Squaring Up, Aberdeen Art Society, Gallery Heinzel

2003–2025

  • RWA Annual Exhibition, Bristol

  • Royal Scottish Academy Annual, Edinburgh

  • Tatha Gallery, Newport-on-Tay

  • Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh

  • Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour Annual Exhibition, Mall Gallery, London

  • Clifton Contemporary, Bristol

2023

  • Borrowed Land, Kilmorack Gallery, Inverness-shire

  • Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh

  • New English Art Club Annual, Mall Galleries, London

  • 2-person exhibition, Kilmorack Gallery, Inverness-shire

  • Beaux Art, Bath

  • Slow Time, solargraphic community project, Watchet, Somerset (curator)

  • Conversations between two landscapes, solargraphic community project, Heritage Centre, Unst, Shetland (curator)

  • Convergence/Divergence: a walk in seven pauses, collective poem/images, Walking the Land: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsir6U15YBU

2022

  • Confusing Shadow with Substance, touring collaborative installation by Janette Kerr & Jo Millett (Heritage Centre, Unst, Shetland; Fisheries Museum, Anstruther; Scottish Maritime Museum, Irvine; Easthouse, Burra, Shetland – curators)

  • Discerning Eye, London

  • Kilmorack Gallery, Inverness-shire

  • ARTeries Gallery, Glasgow

  • Northern Solargraph Exchange: conversation between two landscapes, Mareel Arts Centre, Shetland

2021

  • The Sea The Sea, Sladers Yard, Bridport (4-person exhibition)

  • Landlinks/Groundwork – Place Time Material, Three Storeys Art Centre, Nailsworth (film/mixed media)

  • Somerset Reacquainted bookworks, touring Somerset venues

2020

2019

  • John Davis Gallery, Moreton-in-Marsh

  • Igniting Sight: Contemporary artists inspired by Turner, Slader’s Yard, Bridport

  • Wales Contemporary, Waterfront Gallery, Milford Haven, and Mall Galleries, London

  • Black Swan Open, Frome

  • Kilmorack Gallery, Inverness-shire

2018

  • Currents: Ways of Seeing Water, Slader’s Yard Contemporary Gallery, Bridport

  • Fragile Latitudes, The Step Gallery, Arizona State University

  • A Case for Place – interdisciplinary project with LAND2, Steel Rooms Gallery, Brigg

2017

  • Janette Kerr & Malcolm Ashman, Andelli Art, Wells, Somerset

  • Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour

Awards

2024 Kathleen Conboy Landscape Award, Scottish Society of Artists, Edinburgh
2022 Creative Scotland funding for residency – Slow Time Fast Time – Conversations between two landscapes – Greenland and Shetland
2020 Creative Scotland funding for tour: Confusing Shadow with Substance
2019 Black Swan Open artist prize
2017 Creative Scotland funding for collaborative project: Confusing Shadow with Substance
2014 MET, Norway funding to attend Extreme Wave International Conference

Publications / Essays / Interviews

2024 Channel 5 featured artist: Shetland – Scotland's Wondrous Isle channel5.com
2023 Hendrick’s Gin featured artist for promotional film – Wonderland Magazine
2020 Art North – journal article – featured artist, and online exhibition
– Landscape Research PDF
– Artists in Lockdown – RWA
– Groundworks interview
2019 Creative Boom · Lux Review · Moderdy
2018 Night representation and indeterminacy: night in landscape painting, Landscape Research (1st pub 1997)
2017 Poised between land and far haaf, New Shetlander No. 281; Ofi Issue 52 Arctic Special – Calameo
– Rogue Waves: Anatomy of a Monster, M. Olagnon & J. Kerr, Bloomsbury
2015 Anatomie curieuse des vagues scélérates, M. Olagnon & J. Kerr, Quae, France; Transcan Vol 10, Australia

Kerr regularly gives talks about her practice and research projects to art societies, students, galleries – too numerous to list; most recently for Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institute, Friends of the RWA (Bristol), Cleveland Art Society, Wells Men’s Breakfast Club, U3A, Da Gadderie (Shetland Museum & Archives), and BA students at UHI (Shetland).

Conference / Symposium Papers

2025 Convenor of Walking the Land – artists in conversation session, Lines of Enquiries symposium, University of Gloucestershire
2018 Keynote speaker – The Embodied Experience of Drawing Conference, Plymouth
2017 Collaborative Practice, CMIT biennial ASLE-UKI with LAND2, Sheffield Hallam
2016 Relate North Symposium, ASAD; Making in Transit series, The Cube, London

Curatorial

2023 Invited selector for Wales Contemporary Open
2022 Slow Time – Fast Time community solargraphic exhibition, The Mareel, Shetland; Slow Time community solargraphic exhibition, Black Swan Gallery, Frome
2021–22 Artist’s Mentor (funded by Somerset Arts)
2019 Invited selector for Wales Contemporary Open
2009–2016 Curated the RWA Annual exhibitions

Work in Collections

Chesapeake Maritime Museum, Maryland, USA
Maine Maritime Museum, USA
Royal Collection, London, UK
Shetland Arts, Shetland Isles
NorthLink Ferries, Scotland
Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Bergen, Norway
Dublin Office of Public Works
RWA Permanent Collection, Tallboys Bequest, Bristol
Victoria Art Gallery Print Collection, Bath
Grizedale Society, Cumbria
Colle Verde Art Trust, Tuscany
Private collections worldwide