Kate Just was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1974, but moved to Melbourne, Australia in 1996. Just works in knitting, sculpture, ceramic media and photography. She holds a PhD in sculpture from Monash University, a Master of Arts from RMIT University, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the Victorian College of the Arts. For her PhD research project, , she was awarded the Mollie Hollman Doctoral Medal for the best PhD in Art Design and Architecture. Kate Just has been working as a Lecturer in Art at the Victorian College of the Arts Art since 2005. Kate Just began knitting in 2000 following a tragic family loss. As part of her grieving process, her mother taught her to knit. Just believes that knitting is a powerful personal, political, poetic and narrative tool and claims that her knitted artworks are autobiographical as they explore childhood and biographical experiences.
Work
Just creates elaborate large-scale knitted sculptures, as well as works in resin, clay, collage and photo-based media. Just's work deals with feminist representations of the body. Her use of knitting in many of her works casts craft as a highly engaging and valid form of sculpture as well as a poetic or political tool. Just has also created a number of socially engaged projects and public works in urban communities regarding violence against women. For example in the KNIT HOPE, KNIT SAFE and FURIES works, Just worked with diverse groups of women from communities in the United Kingdom and Australia in which they knitted banners and photographic images challenging the ongoing issue of domestic violence and murders of women such as. Just's work has been exhibited in over a hundred solo and group exhibitions in Australia including Daine Singer, Craft Victoria, Gertrude Contemporary, West Space, Conical, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne Art Fair, Silvershot, Contemporary Art Space of Tasmania, Chalk Horse Gallery, Nellie Castan Gallery, First Draft, MOP, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, and Canberra Contemporary Art Space. Within an international context, Just has exhibited her work at A.I.R. Gallery and AC Institute in New York, Titanik Galleria in Finland, Nanjing University in China, Auckland Art Fair, The Factory at Kunsthalle Krems, Austria, Youkobo Art Space in Tokyo, Japan, Hive Gallery in Los Angeles and Sanskriti Art Gallery in New Delhi. In 2017, Just's works will be exhibited at the Rijswijk Museum in the Netherlands and the newly built ICA in Richmond, Virginia. The banners Safe and Hope are proudly part of the Wangaratta Art Gallery Collection. Paradise, a life-sized knitted installation depicting a woman in a T-shirt and denim cut-off jeans, referencing the abduction of Persephone, is in the collection of the Ararat Gallery TAMA. Kate Just's work is also in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Ergos Collection in Sydney, Artbank and the City of Port Phillip as well as in private collections in Australia, New Zealand, UK, USA and Austria.
