GK Garramone is an early career artist who recently graduated from a MA degree in Contemporary Art Theory from the University of Edinburgh, her practice works with the photographic image to create narrative expressionistic pieces which centre around an individual sense of suffering and realisation. She is interested in the cycles of nature and in exploring human intimacy in landscapes beyond social restraints. It is the honest, almost primal feelings of terror and love which occupy Garramone’s imagery and forms her self realisation of what it means to suffer in girlhood. Her work is the embodiment of a passage from girl to woman, with a focus on femininity that moves beyond aesthetic desires and instead craves comfort in psychological connection. Garramone’s practice is the expression of an individual’s emotive psyche, but can be extended further as traces of a collective female consciousness and experience.

See GK’s work as part of our annual winter open call exhibition, TRACES, showcasing works inspired by the marks that we leave in our wake: footprints in the snow, the enduring warmth of an embrace, the hollow left in the seat of your favourite armchair.

Hi GK! Can you walk us through your creative process? 
My process can change, but it normally begins with a drawing of the image I’ve been thinking about. It’s always a rough scribble, the kind with rushed lines in one of my notebooks but nothing ends up being just like the plan anyway though. Things always change when the camera actually comes out. There are elaborate plans and there are spontaneous shots but I think the thing I try to make sure is present in the whole process is fun. It’s honestly essential when you’re chucking yourself in a pond or snow or something equally hostile in mid February.

What challenges did you experience during the creation of your work and how did you overcome them?
I’ve been thinking a lot about fear recently, particularly the fear that prevents us from creating work. My challenge for years has been how afraid I was. I have just finished my postgraduate thesis on the concept of female art monsters, which followed a feminist application of the term where art monster can be understood as an artist unruly and untamed who rejects social limitations. In an interview produced by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in 2020, Chris Kraus and Jenny Offill enter a conversation on the nature of the art monster. At one point Krauss remarks “I mean, that’s the downside that nobody talks about. The art monster gets lonely and spends all their time looking for a mate.” In some ways I feel this incapsulates my challenge. There is that part of me that doesn’t fully allow myself to try, or just keeps myself safe in the shallows of comfortability. Like Kraus suggests, I get lonely and fear the rejection; I’m scared to frighten people with all of me, and I don’t want to be left alone. In my thesis I interviewed a cross-generational collection of women; unanimously they all confessed that they felt immense social pressure, with a majority also expressing fear at accessing any kind of internal monstrosity in creative pursuits. This is the challenge I have been facing, how to release that art monster into my work; if I let go of shame, can I be strong enough to make the work the want to make? I aspire to be brave in the way I make art and I always thought that meant I had to conquer the parts of myself that felt wrong first but maybe my art monster knows how to make peace with them instead? I want to make work without the social burden of expectations or limitations attached to female artists and I believe that means I must make work not without my fear but alongside it.

How do you overcome creative blocks?
Go see art. I never want to make art more than after I’ve just seen really really great art. 
I always joke that it’s like going to see old friends when I visit the same collections in the same old galleries again and again but it really can get me out of a slump. I just sit with them for a while and eventually they kick something off. 

Which artists inspire you? Are there non-artistic influences such as literature or music that impact your work?
Like I previously mentioned I’ve been really inspired by any form of courageous art monster as of late, artists like Francesca Woodman, Tai Shanim, or Tracey Emin have big spots in my mind right now. Books like Lauren Elkin’s Art Monsters: unruly bodies in feminist art or Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s Monster Theory: Reading Culture as well. My mum is also an artist and over the years our practices have kinda intertwined, we talk so much about our imagery and it feels like sometimes we can share it. She will tell me about something she has read and we’ll talk until it becomes something we can both see. She’ll borrow something from mine and I’ll reimagine something from hers. I love talking to her about art because I love the way her mind works. She’s my inspiration and my guide. 

Can you elaborate on the significance or symbolism of the chosen title of your work?
The title comes from the Emily Brontë poem To a Wreath of Snow. I remember reading it in a high school English lesson, I was maybe 16 and in the fresh stages of grief. For some reason, maybe the grief, the line has always stayed with me and it just seemed to fit for this piece. I don’t normally use namesakes for names, but the piece is still about that loss I was learning at 16 so it seemed to make sense. 

Will your next project be a continuation of your current style or are you experimenting with something different? Can you share a glimpse of your next project?
My next project is a bit different, I’m working a lot more with installation at the minute and am really interested in experience based art. I have this idea, it’s called call me when you’re better and it’s about the passivity of people in the face of suffering. It’s an investigation into gaze and the nature of experience as well as how we are able to stand witness and detach from horror on a daily basis. From the cries of the people in front of us to how we are all so desensitised to scrolling past actual atrocities on a daily basis. By using physical space and exploring the role of the methexis spectator, call me when you’re better is evolving into a multi-disciplinary project; I think the finale of it is some kind of rural immersive art experience but I’m not quite sure yet. 

Connect with GK Garramone over on Instagram, and see her work in TRACES running at SFG until January 6th 2026.