Catherine Truman
Catherine Truman is a jeweller and object-maker based in Adelaide. She has been practising for nearly thirty years, establishing a national and international profile.
Catherine is a co-founder and current partner of Gray Street Workshop in Adelaide, which has become one of Australia’s most established artist collectives.
She has exhibited in all states of Australia, including shows at the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
Internationally she has exhibited extensively throughout the USA, Europe and Asia. In 2000 she represented Australia at the Frankfurt International Craft Triennale and in 2002 her work was shown in the Museum of Contemporary art in Tokyo and Kyoto. Catherine’s work has been featured at the International Expositions of Sculpture Objects and Functional Art in New York and Chicago. Her solo shows have been exhibited in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Darwin, Perth, New Zealand and the USA.
Catherine has participated in a number of residencies including a Visual Arts Board Rome residency and a residency at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work is represented in many public collections in Australia, including Artbank, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the National Gallery of Australia and the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. Catherine’s work is also held in international collections in Germany and New Zealand.
Her works usually take the form of objects carved from wood. The human body, in particular the history of anatomy and human movement, influence Catherine’s practice. She has travelled widely and some of her works have been created in direct response to research focused upon anatomical collections in the UK and Europe, focusing on anatomical models and medical illustrations.
In 2006, the Australia Council for the Arts awarded Catherine a two-year Visual Arts Board Fellowship to research, create and document a series of works for and about the human body. Catherine will travel to the USA to access museum collections and complete a residency with the Adelaide-based Restless Dance Company. This work will culminate in a solo exhibition at the new Anne and Gordon Samstag Art Museum of the University of South Australia and the launch of a monograph written by Julie Ewington in the year following the fellowship.