AJF is pleased to sponsor Australian artist Catherine Truman’s speaking engagement at SOFA New York in June. Catherine is co-founder of Gray Street Workshop in Adelaide, Australia. Established in 1985, it is one of Australia’s longest running contemporary jewelry studios. Her work has always been informed by a strong political consciousness. In recent work she investigates the authenticity of the images we carry about our personal anatomy. The resulting objects, characteristically carved from wood or wax, are not exact anatomical replicas but rather evoke sensory responses of physical recognition and resemblance.
Catherine explains, “I am a maker of objects for and about the human body. My current interests lie in the ways in which human anatomy has been translated through artistic process and scientific method - how the experience of living inside a body has been given meaning.
The interior of the body is a concealed territory - the less we see the more we imagine. I’m interested in how we reveal and conceal the unfamiliar - the unaccustomed, the invisible. A curiosity of the very nature of the human body itself has always been a potent resource for the subject matter of my work and my choice of medium.”
Truman has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally and is represented in a number of major national and international collections. Currently she is a Fine Arts masters by research candidate at Monash University.
Image: Yellow #3 (brooch), 2006 carved English lime wood, paint, shu nihu ink, 80 x 110 x 40mm. Photo by Grant Hancock