Kathy MacCarthy grew up in post-industrial Liverpool in the 1960s and 70s. Her memory of the landscape of abandoned domestic and manufacturing buildings throughout the city, coupled with the development of her interest in the body as form and mass, has continued to provide a rich foundation for her work. After completing her MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 1983, MacCarthy worked with a range of media including wood, aluminium, plaster and latex. In 2008, after following a part-time one-year ceramics course at a nearby community college, she alighted on a material that enabled her to have a more immediate and visceral engagement that best suited her ambitions for the work.

Kathy MacCarthy has a BA in Fine Art from Brighton Polytechnic (1980) and an MA in Fine Art Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London (1983). She has exhibited widely over the last 30 years and taken part in various residency programmes and led workshops at a number of galleries including the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and Camden Art Centre. She has taught at a wide range of art schools since the mid 1980s, including in London at, Central St Martins, and Chelsea School of Art, and at Falmouth School of Art. In 2015 She was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors.