Statement

Jo Chate's work exists at the powerful intersection of feminist philosophy and environmental issues. She examines how our environments—particularly built spaces—have been predominantly designed by and for men, creating a landscape that subtly reinforces patriarchal structures.

The environments in her paintings draw on the artist ’s personal experience of being in that space. Alongside this she interrogates the male gaze by challenging traditional depictions of the female form, from the perspective of a female artist. Jo Chate weaves the experiential into her work challenging conventional understandings of how we experience space particularly in a female body.

Central to Jo Chate's practice are mannequins, which serve as potent stand-ins of the female form. These figures, typically designed as passive recipients of the male gaze, are reclaimed and transformed in her work. Chate grants these formerly inanimate objects agency, repositioning them as warriors, goddesses and multifaceted representations of womanhood. These mannequins become both universal and deeply personal—simultaneously representing ‘me,’ ‘you,’ and all women.

Jo Chate is deeply interested in threshold spaces, interior and exterior, public and private, real and irreal . Examining notions of liminality she explores states of being on the verge of transitioning to something new. In Mictecacihuatl (2024), Chate uses reflections to blur such boundaries—the outside world is reflected in the shop window, the shop interior becomes outside in the painting and the mannequins exist in this reflected space raising questions of what is real space. Her use of mannequins, often with broken or missing limbs and un-naturalistic skin tones, further discourages an easy ‘read' of the female form.

Chate's process begins with photography, capturing moments from the everyday. These serve to root her work in reality, during the process of painting the quotidian gets pushed elsewhere. In Ice Bath (2024) the tree grows out of an ice pond surrounded by acid colours, the hooded figure suggests unease and the painting speaks to impending environmental doom. Metano (2024) a light and airy painting with the feel of desert mirage and derelict buildings carries in its title - Italian for methane - a sharp reminder of greenhouse gases and environmental crisis.

Often using the surrealist technique of ‘coupling of two realities’ (Max Ernst) Chate has developed this largely collage technique into painting - layering two, or more, images with a fluidity of paint and translucent layers she disrupts and transforms reality. Layering images allows for slippage and overlaps, to meld together and partially obscure what has gone before. This process collapses time—past, present and future converge— and allows for multiplicities to emerge with this layering of thoughts, bodies, spaces, conversations. In Limbo (2024), the image of the abducted girl is layered over the bearded man creating complexities that resist easy definition.

Chate approaches her canvases with a choreographic physicality that creates rhythm and movement. All the elements are fluid and tangible, conjuring and connecting complexities that defy simple definitions. The surface is activated, translating internal space into visual terms with an emotional intensity, and the paintings ultimately become a site of transformation where the experiential collides with future possibilities.