About the work
Working across drawing, ceramic sculpture and painting, I create strange and eerie characters that feel like they’re coming into being. They symbolise personal change, yet also act as cheeky allegories for power dynamics in relationships, both human and non-human.
My materials and forms often have historical and social baggage—tugging at ideas of class, gender and the construct of family or kinship. I draw on personal experience, alongside psychoanalysis, literature, and the darker aspects of folklore and pop culture, and I’ve also had a several decades-long affinity with the work of certain women Surrealists.
Frequently presented in dialogue with one another, my cast of hybrid characters mutate and push past what we expect; together they create a dreamlike or uncanny realm, where deep emotional and psychological truths come to light.
Biography
Since graduating with an MA in Fine Art, British artist Kim L Pace has received many awards for her work, including the Evelyn Williams Drawing Fellowship, the Linbury Drawing Fellowship, the Berwick Gymnasium Fellowship and seven ACE awards.
Her work has been shown internationally, including in over 25 solo (& duo) shows and numerous group exhibitions. Her solo institutional exhibitions include: Limerick City Art Gallery, Ireland; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull; Northern Territory Gallery for Contemporary Art, Australia; Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield; McLean County Art Center, USA and Berwick Gymnasium Art Gallery, UK.
Supplementary to her art practice, Kim has been invited to curate projects like ‘Cult Fiction’ for Hayward Gallery Touring, London, ‘Labyrinth of Darkness’ at the Czech Centre, NYC and ‘From Doodle to Digit’ at Tate Britain. She has lectured extensively in Higher Education in London & across the UK, and has also been a visiting lecturer in the USA, Australia and the Netherlands.
Kim’s most recent solo exhibitions include A Fantastic Fermentation of Matter, Danielle Arnaud, London, 2018; Mercurious, Danielle Arnaud, London 2019 (duo); Kindred, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, 2022; Strange Company, Arusha Gallery, Somerset, 2024.
Kim is an elected member of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR), and her published writing includes ‘Making New Stories about Multispecies Kinship through Vital Material Encounters’, Synthesis eJournal (link)
A Feminist–Surrealist Metamorphosis: The Charged Objects of Kim L. Pace, by Catriona McAra is published in Surrealism and Animation, Bloomsbury, June 2025. (link)
Kim talks about her work to Bob Chaundy on the Considering Art Podcast, 2022:- Listen here
Prior to 2005, Kim L Pace was known as Kim Merrington.