Kate Just

2010-11-11T09:36:00.037+11:00

Kate Just is an American-born Australian artist, well known for creating tactile sculptures and installations reinterpreting historic, mythic and iconographic objects and figures often linked to women's histories. In her works encompassing knitting, mixed media sculpture, collage, video and digital print, Just forefronts the materiality and power of bodily experience, and its transformative effect on identity.

In earlier elaborate knitted works, Just drew on myth and folklore linking women with nature to metaphorically reflect a range of personal experiences including the death of her brother, sexual awakening, and her desire to be a mother. These included a life-sized tree embedded with the faces and hands of her family, a Persephone-like figure descending into the muddy waters of her suburban lawn, a corn field sprouting from a bed, and the last moments of a Daphne's chosen transformation into a laurel bush. In each, vivid, appealing scene the physical and emotional mutability of women also relayed ideas of grappling with inevitable losses and life changes.

More recently, Just attempts to 'write' her own and a wider female bodily history with evocative resin-clay sculptures and collages of archetypal objects and forms including spiders webs, ominous eggs, keys, vessels and a range of mysterious tools and instruments.

Kate Just is represented by Daine Singer

NEWS:

Kate Just will be undertaking an Australia Council studio residency in Barcelona from January - March 2012. On return, Just will show new works at Daine Singer Gallery Melbourne in May 2012, and a survey show of Just's knitted sculptures will open at Ararat Regional Gallery. For more information see upcoming exhibitions below.

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS 2011-12:

SOLO:
Venus was her name
Factory, Kunsthalle, Krems, Austria
16 October 2011 - 16 February 2012
Opening: Saturday 16 October 2011
For more information go to

Kunsthalle, Krems

KATE JUST: NEW WORK
Daine Singer
May 2012
For more information go to:

Daine Singer

KATE JUST: KNITTED WORKS 2004 - 2011
Ararat Regional Gallery
17 May - 1 July 2012
For more information go to:

Ararat Regional Gallery

GROUP:

Recent Acquisitions, City of Port Phillip Collection
St Kilda Town Hall, St Kilda VIC
30 November to 29 December 2011
For more information go to:

City Of Port Phillip

Stories from the city, Stories from the sea, Queer urban tales
Curated by Jess Bridport
Substation, Newport VIC
January 15 – February 25 2012
An exhibition and series of performances with artists Andrew Browne, Lucas Grogan, Kate Just, Martha McDonald, T.V Moore, Patrick Pound & Heather B Swann.
For more information go to:

Substation Newport

Hello Dollies
Penrith Regional Gallery, NSW
4 April - 22 April 2012
For more information go to:

Penrith Regional Gallery

Dances with Wools
Bayside City Council, Brighton, VIC
29 Sep to 11 Nov 2012
For more information go to:

Bayside City Council

CURATORIAL PROJECTS

2007-11-11T13:43:00.110+11:00

DREAM WEAVERS
Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania (CAST), Hobart
June 2010
Curated by Kate Just and Daine Singer

Artists: Alasdair McLuckie, Dylan Martorell, Kate Just, Michelle Hanlin, Nathan Gray, James Eisen, Jacque Drinkall, Sean Bailey, Belle Bassin

Dream Weavers brought together artists using aesthetics and interests most strongly associated with New Age and counter-cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s, as a means of reappraising the power of mysticism, paganism, the supernatural, arcane symbolism, folk, goddess worship and tribalism.

This desire to reintegrate archaic and animist belief systems back into dominant Western culture has a strong lineage in art history that is widely evidenced in art movements such as primitivism, surrealism, folk art, land art and feminism. In the tradition of artists before them, the nine artists in Dream Weavers wielded aptly constructive and process oriented techniques: including performance, collage, knitting, clay modelling, assemblage, mixed media installation, patterned drawing and experimental music. Many of them reinterpreted or conversed with previous artists and their works, while others relied on forms of layering, selectively obscuring images or materials.

Installation view

Installation view

Dylan Martorell

Belle Bassin

Sean Bailey

Kate Just

Alasdair McLuckie

Nathan Gray

Jacque Drinkall

James Eisen

Michelle Hanlin

WORKS ON PAPER

2007-04-06T13:37:00.026+10:00

HER TOOLS, 2010
part of the solo exhibition Inward Gathering, Nellie Castan Gallery South Yarra
Suite of 17 Collages on Archival Paper; Framed in Perspex boxes, 30 x 42cm each

BOMBSHELL, 2009
Studio 12, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces
Suite of Seven Collages on Archival Paper, 58 x 78cm each
Photos: Simon Strong

Kate Just’s new exhibition in Studio 12, Bombshell is a new series comprising of seven collages. The title draws on the “Bombshell Girl” or “pin-up” girls who were painted onto the sides of WWII planes, bombers, and their bombs. This series extends Just’s ongoing interest in the idea that women and ‘machines’ can be considered as potentially interchangeable within the male imagination, and as such Just has created her own suite of ‘bomb- shells.’

Virtually legless and armless though implying movement through their curved bases, handles and tubes, Just’s bombshells are anthropomorphic combinations, bringing together both ‘women’ and machines, though perhaps of the domestic, rather than war-waging, sort. These fabulous femmes are comprised of various categories of objects which have actual or historical associations with the feminine, including the natural, the domestic and the bodily. As Just states: “Each collage represents for me an archetypal (rather than stereotypical) notion of ideal femininity - that she is youthful, fertile, desirable, and useful.”

Furthering Just’s interest in the biological mechanisms of femininity, each of these collaged ‘bombshells’ has been named after the female brand-names of contraceptive pills. A chemical intervention in female biology that has both liberated and yet programmed the female body.

Mirena, Yasmin Alesse, Juliet, Estelle, Brenda and Diane are at your service.

GERTRUDE STUDIO ARTISTS EXHIBITION, 2009
Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces
Suite of 3 Collages in main gallery space and 1 above desk/office
Archival Paper, 58 x 78cm each
Photos: Simon Strong

BOB, SPIN, SUCK, 2009

MARCELLA, 2009

SUITE OF FOUR COLLAGES FROM A NEW DAY IN A STRANGE LAND, 2009
Nellie Castan Gallery, South Yarra
Framed collage on archival paper, 60 x 80cm
Photos: Simon Strong

FLYTRAP, 2009

SPIDER LEGGED LILY, 2009

CATCHING THE SEED, 2009

BEETLE ROCK, 2009

A WOMAN'S HEART, 2009, Collage on archival paper, 78 x 58cm

TROPHY/ROOTS, 2009
Nellie Castan Gallery, Sneak Peak Exhibition,
Collages on archival paper, 78 x 58cm

YOU MAKE ME FEEL I, 2008, collage on archival paper, 78cm (h) x 58cm (w)

YOU MAKE ME FEEL II, 2008, collage on archival paper, 78cm (h) x 58cm (w)

YOU MAKE ME FEEL III, 2008, collage on archival paper, 78cm (h) x 58cm (w)

YOU MAKE ME FEEL IV, 2008, collage on archival paper, 78cm (h) x 58cm (w)

YOU MAKE ME FEEL V, 2008, collage on archival paper, 78cm (h) x 58cm (w)

THE CRAFT, 2006
Digital prints from collage on vinyl adhesive, acrylic yarn, latch-hook grid, machine & hand knitted candelabras, hand made frame: cardboard, tape, wound yarn.

The Craft was developed during a 2005-6 print residency at RMIT University curated by Richard Harding.

Just took the opportunity to draw links between textile patterns reproduced in print work and her normal practice of knitted sculptural installation. The repetition of pattern in various forms of printmaking is like knitting, where stitch by stitch the work comes into being. The background ‘wallpaper’ in Just’s ‘The Craft’ is created by repeating the same square of a found image of fabric over 100 times. Like stitches, these layered squares mesh to form the whole picture.

Though Just normally works with knitting’s association with women’s work and the psychological to exploit our tenuous relationship to landscape, ‘The Craft’ instead considers that, no matter how clichéd, crafts are female ‘power tools’. The title alludes to both craft’s transformative power, and its potential as a contemporary form of witchery.

INSTALLATION/ SCULPTURE

2006-05-15T19:28:00.091+10:00

VENUS WAS HER NAME, 2011
Kunsthalle Krems, Factory
Krems, AUSTRIA
Mixed media including knitted sculpture, collage and resin sculpture.
Photos: Christian Redtenbacher

I undertook a residency and produced this exhibition in Krems, Austria to explore my longtime fascination with the Venus of Willendorf, a small Late Palaeolithic figurine dating from around 25,000 BCE and one of the oldest known portrayals of a woman. Discovered near Willendorf in the Wachau in 1908, it is one of Austria’s outstanding archaeological finds. While it is first and foremost an image of an intriguing body, in its pose, facelessness and current positioning in a contained, museological space, I have always been interested in the way it also suggests a woman deep in thought or engagement with her inner self.

I arrived in Austria in the midst of making a self portrait - my own knitted, cast off skin. The idea to make this work which was vulnerable, tactile and hinted at the body as a container arose both from reading Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott's hypothesis that the Venus figurines may have been created as self-portraits and from my interest in the Venus' reflective pose.

I also produced a series of eleven photo collages of Venus-like female idols I call Matrikas, in which I re-assembled various archaeological, artistic and historical pictures to form a suite of intriguing women, as a way of questioning the persistence of women's position within the world of objects. They are placed up high, to acknowledge how female idols of these kinds, in sculptural or pictoral form, have often been held aloft, literally 'looked up to'.

Meanwhile, my table of faux archaeological objects, titled Of Hearth and Home, was inspired by the fact that female figures such as the Venus of Willendorf, were often found among other amulets, and sometimes believed to have been invested with special power for use in shrines, household altars, and granaries. Carefully crafted with resin based ceramic clays, my small sculptures resemble such 'women of the hearth'. In my collection, they are also accompanied by other types of bodily 'relics' including tools which have assisted my own practice as an artist (including knitting needles, thimbles, spindles, and sewing needles), motifs of femininity I have previously employed including spider webs, eggs or vessels, and sometimes humourous, personal objects or body parts including a tampon, my glasses, my fingers and a second version of my knitted head.

For me, the knitted sculpture which spells VENUS was particularly significant work due to the communal effort involved in its making. In public knitting events in Vienna and Krems, more than fifty women, and a few men, helped me created this tactile sculpture. My use of the word-as-sculpture attempts to mesh particularly Western, classical notions of femininity inherent in the word VENUS, with other aspects of the Willendorf figurine, mainly her image of unrestrained sexuality, pockmarked body, seemingly knitted or ropey hat or hair, and her ultimately unknowable, paleolithic origin. For this work, I invited my partner and a range of participants from Austria and beyond to knit a skin for the VENUS letters with pungent smelling, ropey twine called spagat, once knitted in early forms of armour. Spaced out acrossed the entry (or exit), it marks and claims a territory.

Their names follow:

Paula Russell
Hope Russell-Just
Ka Ruhdorfer
Betina Aumair
Jen Liu
Claudia Neugebauer
Snježana Rock
Waltraud Zenz
Antonia Wenzl
Janis Lena Meißner
Michelle Molesch
Anna Dracas
Lucie Lamster-Thury
Christa Langheiter
Birgit Formanek
Pippi Bierbaum
Laura Gföhler
Veronika Mungenast
Kristin Smeral
Christina Gohli
Susanne Frantal
Rafaela Göls
Angela Orlovits
Andrew McQualter
Gregor Kremser
Lisa Steurer
Verena Mistelbauer
Franz Friedrich
Sidal Keskin
Kathi Hackl
Julia Hackl
Susanne Zaussinger
Tanja Nessl
Kathrin Hahn
Marlena Böswarth
Rebecca Klutz
Anja Scherzer
Patricia Endl
Julia Fuchs
Elisabeth Reinberg
Regina Binder
Teresa Binder
Hermann Binder
Maria Wannerer
Wolfgang Müllner
Petra Nitschmann
Veronika Kremser-Falb
Annemarie Falb
Heidi Jaeger
Martina Wagensonner
Züleyha Altııntaş
Young Hee Park
Siegrid Mayer

UNEARTHED, 2011
Craft Victoria, Melbourne VIC
Epoxy resin, wire, cloth, wood. Dimensions variable. Table is 600cm (long) x 75cm (high) x 62cm (wide)
Photos: Lily Feng

Just's work Unearthed consists of a six metre row of 46 unusual tools modelled with a blue-black resin based clay. Displayed on table fitted with a rugged canvas tool roll, Just's gently-curved pewter-like sculptures were inspired by her overseas research in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. Curious about the types of tools and implements used by or on women throughout history, Just poured through Egyptian, Medieval, Greek, Roman, Textile/Costume, Arts of the Americas and Arts of Africa collections across both sites. Initially selecting tools which might be said to reflect, probe, cut, and mark the female body in particular, including mirrors, cosmetic implements, surgical and gynaecological tools and tattoo tools, Just began to extend her archive further. She began including objects which held magical or personal allure to their long gone owners, subtly referenced the shapes and movements of human bodies, and whose creation was initially attributed to men but later questioned. These included spoons, spindles, hand saws, stone-carving tools, mallets, letter openers and tiny sewing scissors. Sketching and sculpting the works in clay, Just simplified and altered many of the forms she had studied, amalgamated various tools, invented her own, and attached bodily parts to a few which look like breasts, hands, hair styles, hips, spines or pelvis'. These oddly shaped new-old tools, laid out in a row, hover above individual pockets, reflecting each object's unique size. Like letters or a script, they write a story: of the way bodies touch and are touched by certain objects and the effects on 'self' that this has.

INWARD GATHERING, 2010
Nellie Castan Gallery, South Yarra, VIC
Epoxy resin compound, wire, cardboard, plaster, shoe polish, glass, perspex, works on paper. Dimensions variable (room is 15m (w) x 10m(l) x 3m(h) (see collage details under works on paper)

Just's ambitious installation Inward Gathering, comprises three different groupings of objects – a set of over-scaled, totemic, clay-modelled black keys, a group of watery, scientific glass vessels, and a collection of black and white collages of fictional surgical or personal tools. Each sculptural series of instruments or objects - from the personal to the symbolic to the medical -attemps to reflect the world of experience housed within the body.

Always drawn to the mysterious form and symbolism of keys, one day as Just sat down to draw with her daughter she found herself drawing a series of unusual black keys. Intrigued, she decided to make them as clay sculptures, imbedding personal or collected visual motifs or ‘scripts’ in each one and basing their shapes and styles on various historical eras and types. She began to regard them as totems signalling the personal significance of space, either inside or around the body, to women she knew, and mothers in particular. One key has an Egyptian hieroglyphic for placenta positioned at its top, another is like an eye of a needle, one is a flower, one bears the Greek female symbol for Juno (genius) while other forms are invented by Just. Many of the keys have tightly knitted black handles or embellishments.

The glass vessels, likewise, are inspired by the history of the vessell as a symbol for women’s sexuality and reproductivity. However, Just’s vessels, amalgamations and adaptations of various types of scientific boiling and volumetric flasks, seem as useful as they are metaphoric; with their low, rounded ‘stomachs’ and extra long swan-like necks they are primed for alchemical experiment. When grouped together look like a watery glass city or gathering of ‘bodies’, anonymous but graceful, holding water, but threatening to tip.

Just’s collages of tools are invitingly curved, smooth, silvery and sleek, but also bear sharp or seemingly menacing components. These fictional tools could be interpreted as a range of hand held probes or ‘openers’: vibrators, dental tools, speculums, corkscrews, anal probes, kitchen tools, hand mirrors, endoscopes and more. In contrast to the keys and vessells, which maintain the body's secrecy, these tools are set to prise open a body in pleasure, or pain.

A NEW DAY IN A STRANGE LAND, 2009
Nellie Castan Gallery, South Yarra, VIC
Various materials including epoxy clay, metallic enamel paints, found urn, inverted vase, hand and machine knitted plastic, fishing bait, wire, expanding foam, fibreglass, fabric, cymbal, bubblewrap, branches.
Dimensions variable: Room is 5m (w) x 7m (l) x 4m (h)
Photos: Simon Strong

Working with collage influenced Just to incorporate found and recycled materials into the sculptural works including plastic leaves, a found urn, branches, old vases, musical cymbals, fabric, old bowls, bubble wrap and fishing bait. She also drew on more traditional sculptural materials including wire, plaster, expanding foam, and timber, making the final forms almost totally uniform with a the careful surface application of a hard setting epoxy clay and coats of high gloss or metallic spray paints.

Arranged and lit to suggest a moonlit landscape, Just’s sculptural works comprise various sized creatures, plants and unknown forms in the midst of metamorphosis or birth, which are accompanied by a sound work by Erik Gorton, that stretches real animal and insect sounds to create the feeling of a foreign nature-scape.

THE GARDEN OF INTERIOR DELIGHTS, 2008
Don't Come Gallery, Royal Arcade, Melbourne
Hand and machine knitted wool and acrylic yarns, cardboard, wire, tape, plastic tubing, rope.
Project Curator: Kirsten Rann
Photos: Nicole Breedon

Just spent the first ten months of 2008 in her Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces residency producing The Garden of Interior Delights, an knitted and sculptural reworking of the strange pink fountain from the first panel in Heironymous Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1500). Bosch’s paradise is a fantastical one, featuring wildly imaginative structures, which appear to be a blend of plant, body and man-made forms, and a natural environment abundant with fruit, water holes and happily cavorting, naked humans. While Art historians and theorists insist Bosch’s fountain refers to either the alchemical sign of Cancer (the crab), a pelican (when pecking its own breast, an ancient sign of Christ’s sacrifice) or a reflection of the pink robed ‘God’ figure in the foreground, Just focuses instead on its uncanny resemblance to the female ovaries and fallopian tubes. The structure as a whole, with its pink fleshiness, orifices, folds and liquid spray seems to her more of a giant totem to femininity and sexual reproduction.

Prior to embarking on this work, Just purchased her first punch-card pattern knitting machine. While in the painting, the fountain is one tasteful, soft shade of pink, Just makes over its knitted ‘sister’ with an array of striped, jig-zag and floral imprints. Just also chopped up pink op-shop jumpers, applying them to larger sections (like the long, flat, middle section at top) while imagining some perfumed ‘aunt’ sacrificing her clothes for art. Folds of hand and machine knitted fabric were sewn into tubes, polyps, and bodily orifices, and the use of macramé suspension devices, feathers, and latch-hooked red rug sections suggest some 70s DIY home décor or attendant folk/tribal aesthetic, drawing links with the craft/nature revival of that era. Somewhat unlike Bosch’s fountain – once centred firmly within an idyllic, rolling natural landscape- Just’s work becomes an ‘interior decoration’, a giant, kitsch body, transplanted safely ‘indoors’, but hovering and swaying as something alive - or capable of making life - might.

SHED THAT SKIN, 2008
Mop Projects, Sydney and The Blake Prize, Sydney
Hand knitted metallic thread, 80cm (w) x 5cm (h) x 350cm (l)
Photos: Kate Just

Shed That Skin was inspired by paintings Just saw in Europe by Van der Goes, Michelangelo, Hieronymous Bosch and Tiepolo which image the serpent tempting Eve with fruits from the Tree of Knowledge. Biblical descriptions and these paintings portray the serpent as a beautiful woman on the top and a snake on the bottom. Her face tilts towards Eve in sisterhood or slight sexual provocation; sometimes her hands and expression mirror Eve’s. This early story and centuries of its retelling marks snakes as dark, evil creatures and women as conniving, easily tempted, untrustworthy and dumb. Just was inspired to knit that burdensome skin, and let both creatures shed it. Hand knitted and sewn over four months in a synthetic gold and black metallic thread that looks like chain-mail/armour, the glittery skin lies on the ground, its long tail travelling across the floor, and curling into a spirl mass just below a knobby tree trunk. The work was exhibited at MOP Projects, Sydney, 2008 and selected as a finalist in the 2008 Blake Prize.

I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF, 2007
Bus Gallery, Melbourne
Hand and machine knitted synthetic fibres, papier mache, wire, timber, expanding foam, enamel paint, found wig, mannequin hands, party satin (curtain), theatre spotlight. figure is 180cm (w) x 50cm (h) x 160 cm (long)
Photos: Andrew Curtis

This work was a response to the Greek tale of Arachne. A proud braggart, Arachne claims she can out-weave Athena, whose subsequent rage is unleashed upon her. Ashamed, Arachne hangs herself, but Athena both saves and further punishes her by turning her into a spider and her noose into a web. In Just's reinterpretation, Arachne is face down on the floor, the only remnants of her feminine state her glossy painted mannequin hands and flowing synthetic red locks. The rest of her is both monkey and spider-like in its brownish palette, her expressive hands poking through ripped knitted skin. A shiny faux fur yarn was used to knit her body ‘costume’, which features breast-like protruding dark humps or markings on her back.

MY DAPHNE, 2007,
Bird Girls, Melbourne, Alluvial Gallery, Bendigo, ABN Amro Art Prize, Melbourne
Hand knitted, machine knitted and hand rug-hooked wool, clay, fibreglass, plastic, timber, papier mache, expanding foam, glue, 80cm (w) x 160cm (h) x 80cm (d)
Photos: Kate Just

The myth of Apollo’s unrequited love of Daphne, and her chosen transformation into a laurel tree has been interpreted by a range of artists including Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Audrey Flack and Kiki Smith. Just’s Daphne is encased in a binding, protective, knitted surface and depicts the last moment of metamorphosis; a single fair arm - the only human vestige - reaches out, patting for the place where her head might be.

PARADISE, 2006
TCB Art Inc, Melbourne, PICA, Perth, and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces
Hand knitted, machine knitted and hand rug-hooked wool, clay, fibreglass, plastic, metal, glue, lifesize, lawn is 320cm x 300cm.
Photos: Kate Just

At first glance, this is modern day suburbia, safely sealed, without a hint of the wild, until we see that she is sinking into an earthen, muddy crack that has split through the grass. She has dropped her long, snaking garden hose and her eyes are closed in surrender...

The work references both Eve, and Greek goddess Persephone, evoking rich associations of 'the feminine' in nature. Persephone’s is one of many stories that tell of goddesses’ descent into the underworld, literally under the surface of the ground, and symbolically this refers to a woman’s journey into the dark and unknown regions of the self.

THE FOUR FATHERS, 2005
Seventh Gallery, Melbourne
Video tent, 3 minute DVD, hand made book with story, masks: fake fur, cotton, wool, beads, paint, cardboard
Photos: Kate Just

Just’s installation at Seventh Gallery ‘The Four Fathers’, plays on the term ‘forefather’ and presents us with a wholly imagined early history that charts the dramatic shift from the early indigenous spirit masks to a more modern day mask: the balaclava. The installation was comprised of three components: a stylised theatre marquee with denim, stars, fringing and black satin which plays an old-time black and white movie of men singing; a fable in a large velvet book and four black hand-knitted masks, which might be worn by strange comic characters, fools or champions.

Making no attempt at historical accuracy, Just presents us with a theatrical constructed scenario that explores the devotion, desire and downfall of this community of men. Humourous and dark, The Four Fathers uses familiar references such as Cowboys & Indians, fairytales, old movies, reality TV contests, and faux anthropological objects to lure us into an imaginary and reflective place.

MASK DETAILS from THE FOUR FATHERS (as installed at Nellie Castan Gallery, 2008)

LOVE IS A ROSE, 2004
Installation at Conical Gallery, Melbourne
DVD, 1 minute, curtains, candelabras, hedge work: cardboard, knitted wool, hot glue (5m wide x 2m high)

ALSO EXHIBITED AT SILVERSHOT GALLERY IN LIFE, DEATH, THEREAFTER curated by Mark Feary
Photos by Christian Capurro

The work as it was first shown at Conical Gallery consisted of two main parts: afront, velvet-curtained off room contained a re-edited video of Just’s parents’ spontaneous renewal of their wedding vows in an Elvis wedding chapel in Las Vegas. Set to music and projected as a number of stills that represented the unfolding action of the event (candle lighting, vows, dancing, kissing) as well as emotional moments, it became a compact visual poem that combined cliché with meaningful connection. In the second room Just housed her recent year long sculpture project: a huge 5metre wide woolly knitted hedge that spells LOVE.

The hedge-work was inspired by Just’s interest in the way people create boundaries to contain what they own and cultivate. Early gardens were enclosed for practical reasons – privacy, exclusion of pests, and to limit cultivated ground. But by carefully constructing and planning a boundary hedge, giving it a unique form or investing in its beauty, the person contained within sends a message to the outside world. When creating the hedge, Just recalled a childhood of Decembers in frozen Connecticut (USA), where her family used to drive through the town at night, observing the elaborately conceived Christmas messages out of lights, decorations and shrubbery in neighbours’ front yards. The LOVE sculpture has been exhibited as a singular sculpture at Melbourne Art Fair, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Silvershot Gallery and John Buckley Gallery.

FAMILY, 2004/5
West Space, Melbourne and Lake Macquarie Regional Art Gallery, NSW
Wire, wood, plaster, knitted acrylic yarn, stuffing, tape, 3m x 3m x 3m.
Photos: Simon Maidment

Produced during a residency at Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery (NSW), Family was inspired by mythological or fairytale notions of nature, where human and nature are entertwined to create a hybrid body. Family Tree is a surreal family portrait, in which knitted heads and hands of Just's family appear large and brown at the ends of the leaf-less knitted branches on which they are perched. A few heads which represent dead, estranged or geographically relocated members have fallen and lay resting on a patch of grass beneath the tree. Family Tree also arose out of more popular connections. As a child, Just saw the movie Poltergeist, and was horrified by the ghostly tree outside the children’s bedroom window that breaks in and attacks them. But despite her horror, she was always an avid tree-climber, as were her siblings, and she remembers the time her parents were forced to return home from a night out because her pyjama clad six-year-old brother refused to come down from a 30 metre high tree. When her brother died much later in life, Just had a series of dreams where she and her sister repeatedly met up with her brother in a tree. Family Tree enacts this reunion.

FERTILE GROUND, as part of HOME LOAN, curated by Kate Shaw and Larissa Hjorth, 2004
Exhibition at Caroline Springs Display Village, Melbourne
Knitted wool, cardboard, tape, bamboo, wire, stuffing, bed base, 2m wide x 2.5m high, x 2m deep.

Fertile Ground, a life-size knitted cornfield, refers to an area where Just grew up. She was drawn to the use of corn fields in films (Signs and Children of the Corn) as a symbol of mysticism, danger and/or spiritual power. Just reworked this for 'Home Loan', a large curated exhibition at one of Australia's most famous suburban housing developments, Caroline Springs. Artists intervened with rooms of various display homes and Just chose a master bedroom. This work ‘Fertile Ground’ became both a comment on the ‘new growth’ in housing developments and families as more than an economic trend. It referenced the history of the area, which before major development, had been a rural farming locale.

SPIRIT GARDEN, 2004
Horticultural Hall, Melbourne, as part of a duo show "Supernatural" with Kate Rohde
Felt, cardboard, glue, paint (shadows), floral plastic
Photos: Kate Just

Spirit Garden was a mysterious installation comprising wall painting, found materials and textile wall hangings. On one wall, Just created a green felted work represented a hybridisation of forms found in both a famous Dutch royal garden, and an indigenous face mask. A giant yellow wig of hair spun around in the centre of the room and shadow paintings of ‘tree people’ were on the wall behind it. This work explored the notion that approaches to land reveal wider cultural, social and spiritual values.

PIECES OF YOU, 2003
West Space, Melbourne
Carpet, new walls, skirting board, wallpaper, paint, slow motion DVD, knitted mask, hand embroidered pillow
Photos: Christian Capurro

For Pieces of You, Just worked from found video footage of her brother on Halloween over ten years ago. As her brother had since died, it became oddly symbolic; the family members quarrel, dance and fight, and beg him not to walk out the door. Just architecturally altered West Space gallery to make it like the entry to her childhood home as seen in the video. The slow motion video played from a picture frame in the space; hand-made knitted and embroidered objects, including her brother's funeral prayer card and the mask he wears in the video, were displayed in the space.

UNIFORM/DAD, 2002
Penthouse & Pavement, Melbourne
Wool, wire, fibreglass, cardboard, lifesize
Photos: Kate Just

Uniform (Dad) was one of Just’s first major sculpture projects and incorporated an installation with this life-size knitted full figure of her father as a Hartford, CT policeman. Made in the wake of September 11, people responded to it both as an authority figure and as a NYC policeman, and an iconic image of that event. For Just, it was more of an exploration of the vastly different paths a life might take. Her father had served in Vietnam, joined the police force and had three children by the age of 26, and she, at 26, was living a vastly different life. The six month, slow process of making the work provided a space for considering this. It also cemented for her the power of knitting to take a work from the ‘real’ to the surreal, imbuing the subject with a sense of time and tactility.

VIDEOS

2006-02-07T13:16:00.003+11:00

Video has formed an important part of Just's earlier practice, sometimes operating on its own and sometimes within the wider context of an installation including knitted objects or sculpture.

HOMEWARD BOUND, 2007
(America Videos, 2000 - ongoing)

Homeward Bound currently consists of over 20 short videos that Just has been ‘collecting’ on trips back to the US over the past five years. They are small family moments; her father drives a car through a snowstorm with country music playing and loud windshield wipers, her mother knits while her father watches tv. Her mother curses the snow mobilers who keep driving over their lawn in winter. Her sister-in-law and mother talk politics while the camera stays squarely on the dogs. Her grandmother and father discuss the contents of the fridge. These works have been edited into an 8 minute video which will premiere at Blindside Gallery, Melbourne in late November, 2007.

THE ENTERTAINER, 2006, 2 minutes

Shot in sepia tone, the Entertainer is half music video, half ‘old time’ silent film. Relying on an amateur performer and arming her with a knitted Stan Laurel mask (poached from a previous exhibition 'Pieces of You'), Just allows the performer to use improvisational movement to explore 'what an entertainer is or does'.

THE FOUR FATHERS, 2005, 6 minutes

Eight men of various ages, backgrounds, and ethnicity sing a Karaoke version of “Don’t Fence Me In” by Bing Crosby. The words ‘give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above, don’t fence me in’ mean different things when sung by different men. The video is filmed in ‘old movie’, a grainy black and white, and the performances range from over the top pantomime, to understated or embarrassed. The video became a central part of an installation involving crafted masks and a velvet book; it told a fictional story about a band of men.

LOVE IS A ROSE, 2004, 2 minutes, 20 seconds

This is a re-edited video of Just’s parents’ recent, spontaneous renewal of vows in an Elvis wedding chapel in Las Vegas. Her parents “did it for fun” but found that the ceremonial acts and exchange of vows evoked heightened emotion. Set to music and projected as a number of stills that represent the unfolding action of the event (candle lighting, vows, dancing, kissing) as well as emotional moments, it is a compact visual poem that formed part of a larger installation within a ‘chapel’ at Conical Gallery. Outside the room rested Just's wide knitted hedge that spelled LOVE.

PIECES OF YOU, 2003, 2 minutes, 40 seconds

For Pieces of You (2003), Just edited and slowed down a piece of found video footage of her family on Halloween over ten years before. Her brother, who had since died, is filmed here by her father. Her sister screams at him to dance, Just’s mother begs him to collect Halloween candy on safe streets. As he goes to leave, his sister becomes hysterical begging him to stay and dance for the camera. A high drama soap opera in under two minutes, the footage reveals intense family dynamics. Just ended up working an entire installation around it at West Space, architecturally altering the gallery to make it like the entry to her childhood home (which is seen in the video).

MARSHA, 2002, 3 minutes

An old cardboard box bearing an image of the hard rock mainstay, the Marshall amplifier, was the inspiration for this work. It led to the creation of “Marsha’, a knitted pink and black amplifier, and the accompanying video work, which features the artist in a homemade tube top and leggings playing her knitting machine while imitating classic rock/pop video dance cliches. Just then overlays a soundtrack of a slow, melancholy song about a girl so “ugly, ugly, ugly, I want to diiiiie”.

NEEDLE EXCHANGE, 2002, 5 minutes, silent

Three army men from different countries sit together on a park bench, laughing and knitting. Made as a response to S11, Just taught the men to knit in record time and constructed this silent film, which references performance trios such as The Three Stooges. The work played underground in Flinders St Station Melbourne, on the one year anniversary, September 11, 2002.

ARTIST's BIO, CV and CONTACT

2006-02-07T13:01:00.046+11:00

BIO
Kate Just was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1974 and moved to Melbourne, Australia, in 1996. Kate Just holds a Bachelor of Science in Film Making from Boston University, a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, and a Master of Arts (Fine Arts) from RMIT University, Melbourne. She has exhibited her work across Australia at a range of public, artist run and commercial galleries including Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania, and Daine Singer.

Just has been shortlisted for numerous national prizes including the Beleura National Works on Paper Prize 2010, The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, 2009, The Blake Prize, 2009 and the 2007 RIPE: Art& Australia Award. In 2006, Just was the winner of the Siemens Fine Art Prize. She was an artist in residence at Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne 2007, and at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces from 2008 - 2009. In 2011 and 2012 she will undertake residencies at Krems AIR, in Krems Austria and at the Australia Council Studio in Barcelona. She has been a lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne since 2005.

To contact Kate Just, email kateandpaula@hotmail.com or contact her gallery Daine Singer

EDUCATION
PhD (Fine Arts) candidate, Monash University (2010 -
Master of Arts (Fine Arts), RMIT University, (2006 - 2008)
Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting), School of Art, Victorian College of the Arts (2002)
Bachelor of Science (Film Making), School of Communications, Boston University (1996), Boston, USA

GRANTS PRIZES, AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES
2012
Residency, Australia Council Studio, Barcelona

2011
Residency, Krems AIR, Krems, Austria
Arts Project Grant, City of Melbourne

2010
St Kilda Bowling Club Studio residency (2010 - 2011)
Monash Graduate Scholarship (2010 - 2012)
Monash Postgraduate Travel Grant
Finalist, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery National Works on Paper Award
Finalist, St Michael's Archangel Award
Finalist, Qantas Contemporary Art Encouragement Award

2009
Finalist, Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, NSW
Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces Residency, (2008 - 2010)

2008
Finalist, Ola Cohn Sculpture Prize
Finalist, The Blake Prize
Janet Holmes A Court Artists Grant
Australian Postgraduate Award, Master of Arts (Research), RMIT University

2007
Artist in Residence, Heide Museum of Modern Art
Finalist, ABN Amro Emerging Art Award
Finalist, Agendo Art Award
City of Melbourne Arts Project Grant Recipient
Australian Postgraduate Award, Master of Arts (Research), RMIT University

2006
Winner, Siemens Fine Art Award, RMIT Gallery, Storey Hall
Finalist, Art & Australia/ANZ Private Bank Emerging Artists Award
Australian Postgraduate Award, Master of Arts (Research), RMIT University
Emerging Writers Program, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces
Melbourne Art Fair, Project Room Work Grant
Artist in Residence, RMIT Summer Print Program, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
NAVA Visual and Craft Artist’s Grant

2005
Arts Development Grant (Creation), Arts Victoria
Finalist, Canberra Contemporary Art Award, Australian Capital Territory

2004
Artists Project Grant & residency, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery & NSW Ministry for the Arts
NAVA Visual and Craft Artist’s Grant
City of Melbourne Arts Project Grant Recipient

2003
City of Melbourne Arts Project Grant Recipient
Winner of the Toorak Village Sculpture Festival Emerging Artist Award

2002
National Gallery Women’s Association Encouragement Award, VCA Graduate Exhibition
Finalist, Wallara Travelling Scholarship
People’s Choice Award Winner, IQ Exhibition, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2012
Kate Just: New Work, Daine Singer, Melbourne
Kate Just: Knitted Work, 2004 - 2011, Ararat Regional Gallery, Ararat VIC

2011
Unearthed, Craft Victoria, Melbourne
Venus was her name, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria
Kate Just, Daine Singer Project, Zurich, Switzerland

2010
Inward Gathering, Nellie Castan Gallery, South Yarra, VIC

2009
A New Day in A Strange Land, Nellie Castan Gallery, South Yarra, VIC
Gertrude Studio 12 Exhibition, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces

2008
Supernatural, RMIT School of Art Gallery, October
The Garden of Interior Delights, Don't Come Gallery, 2nd Floor, Royal Arcade, Melbourne
Natural Woman, Raw Space, Brisbane
Shed That Skin, MOP Projects, Sydney

2007
I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself, Bus Gallery, Melbourne
Wall Flower, The Dolls House, Preston

2006
Paradise, TCB art inc, Melbourne
The Entertainer, Window Projection @ Centre for Contemporary Photography, Fitzroy
Individual Project Room, Melbourne Art Fair

2005
Boundary (LOVE), Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Australian Capital Territory
The Four Fathers, Seventh Gallery, Fitzroy
Family, West Space, Melbourne

2004
Love is a Rose, Conical Gallery, Fitzroy,

2003
The Pickin’ Patch, Bus Gallery, Melbourne
Pieces of You, West Space, Melbourne

2002
Needle Exchange, Sticky, Flinders Street Station, Melbourne
Uniform, Penthouse and Pavement Gallery, Carlton

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2012
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, Queer Urban Legends, cur. by Jess Bridport, Substation, Newport, VIC
Hello Dollies, Penrith Regional Gallery

2011
Interior Architecture, Curated by Caroline Phillips, Latrobe Gallery, Bendigo
City of Port Phillip New Acquisitions, St Kilda Town Hall, St Kilda, VIC

2010
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery National Works on Paper Award, Mornington, VIC
Dream Weavers (co-curator with Daine Singer and exhibiting artist),Contemporary Art Spaces Tasmania, Hobart
Secret Files from the Working Men's College, RMIT Project Space, Melbourne

2009
Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, Woollahra City Council Chambers, NSW
Gertrude Studio Artists Exhibition, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Fitzroy
Magic Eye, Platform, Flinders St Station, Melbourne
Nothing out of the Ordinary, Nellie Castan Gallery, South Yarra
Ivy Tropes, Cur. Melissa Loughnan, ACGA Gallery, Federation Square, Melbourne
Love Bites, curated by Sarah Jones, Plimsoll Gallery, Tasmania
Auckland Art Fair, represented by Nellie Castan Gallery

2008
Neo Pop, John Buckley Gallery, Richmond
Weaving, Chalk Horse Gallery, Sydney
Knitting, (curated by Diana Robson) Hawksbury Regional Gallery, NSW
Gertrude Studio Artists Show, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Fitzroy
The Blake Prize, National Art School, Sydney
The Ola Cohn Sculpture Prize, City Library Gallery, Melbourne
Life, Death, Thereafter, (curated by Mark Feary), Silvershot, Melbourne
The Men's Gallery Show, curated by Phip Murray, in association with Next Wave Festival, Melbourne
The Ergas Collection, Gallery 9, Sydney
United Artists, Palais Theatre, St Kilda
Bus vs. Blindside: Rumble in the Library, City Library Gallery, Melbourne

2007
B-II, (Curated by Daine Singer), Blindside, Melbourne
You Make Me Feel: Tamara Marwood and Kate Just, Alluvial Gallery, Bendigo
ABN Amro Emerging Art Award, Optus Centre Foyer, Melbourne
Homeland, Heide Residency outcome, Sidney Meyer Education Centre, Heide Museum of Modern Art
40 Degrees, curated by Alexie Glass, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Fitzroy
Side Stitch, curated by Olivia Poloni, Blindside, Melbourne
Manufactured, Raw Space, Brisbane, QLD
Bird Girls, curated by Kate Daw and Vikki McInnes, VCA Gallery

2006
Siemens Fine Art Scholarship Exhibition, RMIT Gallery, Storey Hall
RMIT Print Residency Exhibition, Project Space, RMIT University
Only Some of the Time, First Draft Gallery, Sydney
Beckon (Co-Curator & participating artist) Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, WA
Lexicon, curated by Martina Copley, City Library, Melbourne

2005
Canberra Contemporary Art Award, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Australian Capital Territory
Selekta, (Co-Curator), West Space Gallery, Melbourne

2004
Traverse, Lake Macquarie Regional Art Gallery and Rocketart, Newcastle, New South Wales
Toorak Village Sculpture Festival, Toorak Village, Mal GBH Hairdressing Salon
She’s Crafty, First Draft Gallery, Sydney
Supernatural, a duo show w/ Kate Rohde, (as part of Next Wave 2004), Horti Hall Gallery,Melbourne

2003
Home Loan (curated by Larissa Hjorth and Kate Shaw) Caroline Springs Warehouse Displays
Toorak Village Sculpture Festival, Toorak Village, Toorak
Nightvision III (curated by Larissa Hjorth), Gallery 4A, Sydney

2002
Wallara Travelling Scholarship, VCA Gallery, Southbank, Melbourne
Just Out of the Shire, Scott Donovan Gallery, Sydney
New Hard Gossip, (curated by Constanze Zikos), PB Gallery, Prahran
Shoot (curated by Laresa Kosloff), Block, Sydney
Neo Noir (curated by Mark Feary), Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Fitzroy
IQ (curated by Colin Duncan), Midsumma Festival, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick

2001
Something for the Ladies, Penthouse and Pavement, Carlton
B-Hive, Sticky, Flinders Street Station, Melbourne
KATE, with Kate Rohde and Kate Stones, Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, St Kilda

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Lecturer, Painting Department, School of Art, Victorian College of the Arts, Southbank , Feb 2005- (current).
Program Coordinator, West Space Gallery, Melbourne, 2005 –2006.
Committee Member, West Space Gallery, Melbourne, 2005-2006.
Gallery Tour Guide, Flinders Lane & Fitzroy, Centre for Adult Education, 2005 – 2006.
Panel Member, City of Melbourne Arts Grants, Young Artists Grant Assessment, 2004.

PUBLIC AND GUEST LECTURES
Guest Lecturer, Swinburne TAFE, Prahran, 2008.
Guest Lecturer, School of Creative Arts, Melbourne University, 2007.
Artist in Residence/in Conversation, Heide Musuem of Modern Art, 2007.
Artist Talk, Manufactured, Raw Space, Brisbane, 2007.
Artist Forum, Bird Girls, Victorian College of the Arts, 2007.
Artist/Curator Talk, Beckon, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, WA, 2006.
Speaker (on behalf of West Space), ACCA Education Program, September 2005.
Guest Lecturer, Art Forum, ANU School of Art, Canberra, 2005.
Traverse, Public Forum, Lake McQuarie City Art Gallery, 2004.

PUBLISHED WRITING (by the artist)
The Gift and the Curse, exhibition catalogue for Drew Pettifer, The Gift and the Curse, RMIT Project Space, February 2011.
The Whole Truth, exhibition catalogue for Holding Pattern, solo exhibition by Caroline Phillips, George Paton Gallery, March 2010.
Kaleidoscope, exhibition catalogue for solo exhibition by Song Ling, Niagra Gallery, February 2010.
The Body Talks: Video Work of Kotoe Ishii,exhibition catalogue, Libary Art Space, December 2009.
Tamara Marwood, exhibition catalogue for A Little Ladylike Tinkling and Smearing, Craft Victoria, 2008.
Parasite Specific, Objects in Space exhibition catalogue, Next Wave Festival, May 2008.
Free Range, catalogue essay for Range of Motion (Penny Cain, Emma White, Maddy Donovan), West Space, June 2007.
Rich Text, catalogue essay for Rich Text, RMIT Storey Hall, May 2007.
Louise Weaver, review of Taking a Chance on Love, Selected Works 1990 – 2006, Artlink: Dec 2006.
Before Monday, catalogue essay for Katherine Huang’s Gertrude Studio 12 exhibition, Nov 2006.
Untitled review of Janenne Eaton’s Angle of Head exhibition, EYELINE Magazine, July 2006.
Knitting Confessions: PURL YOUR HEART OUT!, in Hao Gao, edited by Olivia Barrett, 2006: Singapore/Melbourne.
Paradise: an essay, TCB Art Inc, June 2006.
Elizabeth Gower, review of Sites & Conversations at VCA Gallery, EYELINE Magazine, Issue 59, 2006.
Susan Wirth, Review, West Space, UN Magazine, Issue 4, 2005.
The Four Fathers, short story with exhibition, Seventh Gallery, 2005.
Review of Susan Wirth, Arlo Mountford, Simon Terrill and Janenne Eaton, www.westspace.org.au., 2005.
Flesh, Review of Melbourne Biennial for MESH, Experimenta www.experimenta.org.au, 1999.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Daniela Tomasovsky, “Venus Reloaded”, Morgen: 5/11 (Austrian magazine), October 2011.
Liza Power, "Tools of our Trade Take on New Guises," The Age Newspaper, April 16, 2011.
Robert Nelson, "If Nightmares Come True", The Age Newspaper, November 19, 2010.
Art Collector Magazine, "Kate Just", October 2010.
Rose Vickers, "Kate Just: New Work", Art World Magazine, Issue 9, June/July 2009.
Alice Blackwood, “Stitching Myths and Memories: The work of Kate Just”, Textile Art Forum Magazine, Vo. 28, Issue 2, No 94, August 2009.
Dan Rule, Critical Guide, A2 section, The Age Newspaper, 18 July, 2009.
Anna Saunders, "Simply Red", Marie Claire Australia, June 2009.
Tai Snaith, "Life and Times", Artlink, Vol 29, No. 1, March 2009.
Ross Moore, “Goddess of the Kitsch”, The Age Newspaper, Friday 24 October, 2008.
Dylan Rainforth, “Kate Just”, The Age Newspaper, M Magazine, Sunday 12 October, 2008.
Ashley Crawford, "Blake Makes Spirited Choice", The Age Newspaper, Wed 27 August, 2008.
Back Page Featured Artist, National Association for the Visual Arts Magazine, July 2007.
Stephen Gallagher, “At the Crossroads of Daphne”, exhibition catalogue for You Make Me Feel, July 2007.
Terri-Anne Kingsley, All Stitched Up, ABC Radio Interview/article, www.abc.net.au/centralvic/stories/s1978215.htm, July 2007.
Penny Webb, “Bird Girls”, The Age Newspaper, M Magazine (p.42), The Age Newspaper, 6 May, 2007.
Andrew Stephens, “Open Wide, come inside”, The Age Newspaper, M Magazine (p. 41), 6 May, 2007.
Olivia Poloni, “The Dolls House – A Modern Wunderkammer”, Making Space Event/exhibition catalogue, April 2007.
Vikki McInnes, “Kate Just” Bird Girls exhibition catalogue, VCA Gallery, April 2007.
Kate Daw, “Bird Girls, Fly High, Fly Low”, Bird Girls exhibition catalogue, VCA Gallery, April 2007.
Olivia Poloni, “Side Stitch”, exhibition catalogue, VCA Gallery, March 2007.
Megan Backhouse, “40 Degrees”, The Age, Saturday 17 February, 2007.
Ric Spencer, “Flight of the fantasy Beckons”, The West Australian, review, 9 September 2006.
ABC TV Interview/Presentation, Sunday Arts Program, Sunday 20 August, 2006.
Megan Backhouse, “Mixed Media”, The Age, Wednesday 2 August, 2006.
Robert Nelson, “ Unexpected Encounters”, The Age, Wednesday 2 August, 2006.
Dominique Angeloro & Jesse Garron, “BECKON”, catalogue, August 2006, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art.
Robert Nelson, “Fabrications to Make You Knit Your Brow in Perplexity”(review), The Age, Wed. 14 June, 2006.
Megan Backhouse, “Art Galleries”, The Age, Saturday 17 June, 2006.
Kylie Gusset, "The Medium is not the Message", Yarn Magazine, March 2006, page 6.
Penny Webb, “Family”, Sightlines, the Age, 29 June, 2005.
Bridget Cameron, “ The Knitting Train”, commissioned by Artlink for www.craftculture.org, April 2005.
Dominique Angeloro & Jesse Garron, “Crossroads: The Politics of Every Which Way” Traverse catalogue 2004.
Meghan Backhouse, “Just in time for love”, The Age, 23 October 2004.
Penny Webb, “Not In Their Nature to Be Loud”, The Age, 29 May, 2004.
Meghan Backhouse, “Conversion to Suburban”, The Age, 10 September 2003.
Andrew Brasier, “Delfin’s Art Encounter”, Herald Sun Home magazine, 13 Sept 2003.
Larissa Hjorth and Kate Shaw, “Home Loan” (catalogue essay), 2003.
Peter Hill, “Leaving the Shire”, Critic’s Picks, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September 2002.
Ashley Crawford, “From the Dark Screams Art” (review), The Age, 29 May 2002.
Larissa Hjorth, “Neo Noir”, Broadsheet, summer 2002.
Jazmina Cininas, “Uniform” (review), Artlink, Vol. 22 No. 1, March 2002.
Kate Daw, “Searching for Club Kate”, (catalogue essay), 2001.