Catherine Bailey

Sorry parade is a non-linear, narrative, installation constructed with words, photos and paintings compiled during Catherine Bailey’s journey to China and Paris. The current iconography is a combination of East meets West. Catherine collected her imagery whilst on long walks through cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Paris and Rome. The imagery comes from many sources, museums, temples, gardens, forests, nature reserves, churches, postcards, film, daily photos taken on route in the street, television, books and snippets of conversations.

Whilst the photographs are taken spontaneously with a Fiji digital camera her paintings are from a painterly tradition and explore the possibilities of paint itself considering texture, layering, solarisation, haloing and pure and mixed colour. Her work is generally considered raw, bold and almost elemental with a deep connection to nature. This work is a slight departure.

Most of her current work is painted on Bank posters, which provide a hopeful metaphor for humanitarian and environmental concerns triumphing over greed and the ‘Privatisation of wealth and public responsibility for debt’ mentality. This side of the work is particularly pertinent with the current financial crisis.

Her influences refer to indigenous Australian Artists such as Emily Kngwarre and Ian Abdullah and Australian contemporary artists from the expressionist tradition such as Aida Tomescu, Idris Murphy and Elizabeth Cummings.

If selected Catherine will construct a similar installation called Weathering the Styrofoam considering her relationship to consumerism and the Aeroplane camouflage used on B52 bombers that fly over her rented studio from the Richmond airbase.