Kiwi takes on the world
Two years of being a finalist in the portrait section of Sydney’s Head On Photo Festival has set Kiwi photographer Cathy Carter up for even more international success, as her work recently travelled all the way to New York to be a part of the exhibition titled Out from Down Under and Beyond: Fine Art from Australia and New Zealand shown at Agora Gallery. The exhibition closed on June 9, but Carter’s plans don’t end there — the works will also travel to Paris to be shown later in 2016 at the Moaroom, where works from New Zealand’s leading designers are showcased to a European audience.
The photographs that Carter showed in New York, and which will head to Paris, are from her series Oceanids Rising. The three images — titled Submerged, Suspended 2, and Hesione #1 — explore relationships to bodies of water.
“My practice is critically concerned with water in all its forms and permutations. Our relationship to water carries our primal origins as well as cultural, social, and political perspectives. The relationship between our human body and bodies of water is one aspect of my practice. I’m acutely conscious of water as central to our being. In all my work, I’m inviting the viewer to embark upon a submersive experience, connecting to the fluid nature of our being, and inner and external worlds,” Carter explained.
Agora Gallery has described Carter’s focus as: “convey[ing] a sense of otherworldliness in water as a medium and the ocean as geographical feature”. The human inclusions in Carter’s images communicate the differing perceptions that water can evoke, the way in which water can be terrifying as well as the way it can be comforting.
To explore more of Carter’s work, visit cathycarterartist.com.