The Glasgow-based artist and musician Katy Dove has died aged 44. Best known for her vibrant, brightly coloured animations, she was also a member of the all-female band Muscles of Joy.
Last summer, Dove presented a solo show as part of Generation, the Scotland-wide celebration of the last 25 years of contemporary Scottish art. Her show at Duff House, Banff featured projected animations and works on paper and canvas.
Born in Oxford in 1970, Dove grew up in the Black Isle peninsula, near Inverness. After graduating from the University of Glasgow with a degree in psychology, in 1996 she gained a scholarship to Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art.
In 2003 Dove was one of the artists featured in Zenomap, Scotland’s first presentation of work at the Venice Biennale. Her video, You, was described by Dan Fox in frieze as performing ‘a graceful animated dance, with soft-hued, amorphous shapes gliding and pirouetting across the screen to the accompaniment of lo-fi electronic meanderings.’
The band Muscles of Joy was formed in 2007 with artist friends in Glasgow. They played their first gig in 2008 and their debut LP was longlisted for the first Scottish Album of the Year award in 2012.
In their obituary in The Herald newspaper, Anna McLauchlan and Kirsteen Macdonald write of Dove’s interest in choreography and ‘art’s visceral potential’, describing her as ‘grounded by a stubborn but gentle independence, conveying a sensibility that continually inspired those around her.’
At Glasgow Film Theatre last night, the artist Charlotte Prodger dedicated the first screening of her 2014 Margaret Tait Award film, Stoneymollan Trail, to Dove.
