Kate Just is an established artist who works with sculpture, installation, neon, textiles and photography to produce contemporary art works that promote feminist representations of the body and experience. Specific to Just’s practice is the use of knitting as engaging sculptural medium and an unwitting political tool. In addition to her highly crafted solo artworks, Just often works socially and collaboratively within the community to create large scale, public projects that tackle significant social issues including sexual harassment and violence against women.

Kate Just holds a PhD in Sculpture from Monash University, a Master of Arts from RMIT University, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Victorian College of the Arts. Just’s practice led PhD in Sculpture, The Texture of Her Skin, won the Mollie Hollman Doctoral Medal in 2013. Just has been a Lecturer in Art at the Victorian College of the Arts since 2005, and in 2017 was appointed as The Head of Graduate Coursework.

Just has exhibited her artwork extensively across Australia in over one hundred group and solo exhibitions including at The National Gallery of Australia, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Arts, Artspace, the Melbourne Art Fair, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Craft Victoria, Gertrude Contemporary, RMIT Project Space, the Margaret Lawrence Gallery at VCA, The Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne Art Fair, the Contemporary Art Space of Tasmania, MOP projects, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, and Canberra Contemporary Art Space.

Internationally she has exhibited her work at AIR Gallery and the AC Institute in New York, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Richmond Virginia, the Rijswijk Museum in the Netherlands, the Auckland Art Fair, Hive Gallery in Los Angeles, Kunsthalle Krems in Austria, Sanskriti Gallery in New Delhi, Youkobo Artspace in Tokyo and Titanik Galleria in Turku, Finland.

Just has been the recipient of over forty grants, prizes, fellowships, awards and residencies. She has received grants from the Australia Council for the Arts, City of Melbourne and Creative Victoria and was the winner of the 2007 Seimen’s Prize, the 2013 British Council Realise Your Dream Award, the 2014 Rupert Bunny Visual Art Fellowship, and the 2015 Wangaratta Textile Prize. She has undertaken local residencies at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces and the Australian Tapestry Workshop and been awarded numerous international residencies including Red Gate in Beijing, Youkobo Artspace in Tokyo, the Australia Council Residency in Barcelona, the Asialink residency at Sanskriti Foundation in New Delhi and a KREMS AIR residency in Krems Austria, followed by a major institutional solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Krems Factory in 2011. Just’s work is held in numerous public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, Ergas Collection, the City of Port Phillip, Wangaratta Art Gallery, Ararat Regional Art Gallery and Proclaim Management Collection.