Tania Kovats
Professor of Drawing at Bath Spa University
contact: t.kovats@bathspa.ac.uk
The main focus of Kovats’ work is how art mediates and communicates our experience of what we call nature, which Kovats views as a set of interconnected processes and systems. Kovats works across various platforms including sculptural works, drawings, writing, temporary and permanent works in the public realm. Her work in the public realm engages with audience beyond the gallery context and has been supported by the Arts Council England, the Gulbenkian Foundation, The Art Fund, Leverhulme, and the Henry Moore Foundation. Kovats’ works are in both public and private collections in the UK and abroad, including Arts Council, The British Council, the UK Government Art Collection, the National Maritime Museum Greenwich, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Increasingly her work addresses environmental and socio political implications of her subject, with water being her central focus, the seas and oceans, river systems, maritime culture, coral bleaching, water pollution, flooding, tides, and the beauty of the horizon line.
Drawing has been the subject of Kovats’ publishing, role as an educator, and personal practice. The Drawing Book: Drawing as a Primary Means of Expression was Kovats’ first publication on drawing that explored the cross-disciplinary nature drawing, making a case for drawing as the most democratic of art forms. Her next publication Drawing Water looked at drawings thematically linked by the sea examining drawing as a mechanism of exploration.
Kovats ran the MA Drawing at University of the Arts London until 2018 when she was appointed Professor of Drawing at Bath Spa University. She continues to be an advocate of the importance of drawing as it occurs across disciplines, as a direct tool of communication and thinking, a mechanism of meditation, and to celebrate drawing in its expanded form.
Kovats is represented by Pippy Houlsdworth Gallery London.