CATHERINE SAGIN
Catherine Sagin is a Brisbane based visual artist and Co-director of the Artist Run Initiative No Frills*. Catherine recently completed her Honours in Visual Arts at Queensland University of Technology and is commencing her Master of Arts (Research) in 2009.
Her practice employs methods of performance, installation, object-making and time-based media. Her work playfully examines the relationship between functional design and the potentially dysfunctional qualities of art. She is interested in renegotiating the conventions of organisation implicit in domestic space, particularly those relating to form and function. Through strategies of art making, she approaches modern design with a willingness to misinterpret and hybridise.
Catherine collaborates under the pseudonym Fiona Mail with fellow Brisbane artist Kate Woodcroft. The focus of Mail’s practice is on the boundaries between bodies, particularly between artist(s), artwork (objects) and viewer. Their work explores the physical transgression or instability of these boundaries and suggests new modes for perceiving these relationships.
Catherine is currently exhibiting in Hand Made Strange at Artisan Gallery, Brisbane.
ELIZABETH WILLING
Elizabeth Willing is a Brisbane based visual artist currently studying the BFA Honours program in (Visual Arts) at Queensland University of Technology. Her practice encompasses object based work, performance, and time-based media with an emphasis on using food as a material to make art with. She is interested in how the social, sensual and ephemeral aspects of food, particularly confectionary, can be translated into artworks. She explores the way that food can be can be formed through various methods of preparation and cooking, how it can be exhibited as art, and how it becomes transformed by the processes of time or consumption during it’s display.
Elizabeth’s work has been included in the annual Unleashed exhibition, Hand Made Strange at Artisan Gallery Brisbane from February 5 to April 4 2009. The work on display is a collection of small sculptures assembled from sweets, cake decorating equipment and other found objects. The opening night of the exhibition also included a cake cutting performance where a wedding cake sculpted into a wine cask was served to the viewers.
HELEN ROGERS
Helen Joy Rogers (b. 19/11/1987) is a young Brisbane artist, working part-time as art assistant at Somerville House Private School, part-time completing a Bachelor of Fine Art majoring in Sculpture and New Media at the Queensland College of Art in Southbank and currently exhibiting in Hand Made Strange at Artisan. Past exhibitions include Untitled #51 (2008) at QCA, where Helen received an award from the Fine Art Committee in Sculpture and Intermedia, New Work (2008) at the Project Gallery, QCA, and the 2High Festival (2007) at the Powerhouse, New Farm. Also in 2008 Helen co-coordinated Cannon Space, a temporary artist-run space assisting young artists in weekly exhibitions and events, and in 2007 was approached by the Women’s Collective at the University of Queensland, to design the 2007 Annual T-Shirt.
Helen’s influences and inspiration include modern and contemporary art practice art theory and art history, museology, natural history, theory regarding gender, the body and sex, western philosophy and literature.
Helen’s plans for the future include finishing all graduate and post-graduate studies in Fine Art, working in tertiary education and/or creating opportunities for young/emerging artists, either by creating an artist-run space, or residency.