London-based artist Kate Garner's portraits and photo-manipulations are the hyperbolic and extremely colorful amalgam of an artist hitting her stride in technique, humor and political intrigue, inspired by such muses as Leigh Bowery, Pete Burns, Booby Tuesday, JT Leroy and many unknowns. Garner has found and championed a group of identity artists--people who use their bodies as walking, talking art installations--highlighting the Superheroic side of the IDentitist movement in this collection of photographs as part of her first gallery show in the United States.

"I've always believed that shifting your public persona has an artistic level of intrigue," says Garner. "Nowadays there are Identity shifters, or Identitists, who are very conscious of themselves as visual and performance artists, and I think they need to be recognized by the Fine Art world as an artistic type--like a painter, or a writer." Garner should know. In the late '80's she was an outrageously dressed pop star known as Haysi Kate and her band, Haysi Fantayzee were hitting gold records in the UK, Germany and Australia. Garner next moved into a very successful career as a photographer, creating portraits of many musicians and celebrities such as Boy George, Sinead O'Connor, Milla Javovich, Angelina Jolie, David Bowie, Cameron Diaz, PJ Harvey, Bjork, John Galliano, Kate Moss and numerous others. Her work has also appeared in American Vogue, English Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, and she is a contributing editor of i-D magazine.

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