Artists

Kate Bernauer lives and works in Brisbane . Although predominantly a photographic artist, she has also made stop motion and video works and is currently working as a camera person in a 3D environment for the video games company Pandemic.

The series I’ll be home in time for dinner explores the ridiculous and often tragic nature of human experience. The work draws from dreams and ‘strange, but true’ columns. The use of theatrical lighting and props creates a stage where poetic metaphors address the contradictions and absurdities of everyday life.

Bernauer talks about her series long way home & notes on trying to be a fish as following.

It could be said that a landscape exists within our memory in a way that is infused with our own particular looking. Our visions carry with them both a personal and collective history. As an artist, I am interested in the nature of the relationship between landscape and memory.This work is embedded with implied narratives that are inspired by dreams, myths and tall stories. The Gold Coast and Brisbane night-time cityscapes provide familiar backdrops, and yet this is not how we usually see these places. This is not the upfront, flashy Gold Coast we usually know. This is not the bright, sunny Brisbane we are familiar with. Here stories unfold, playing themselves out in their dream-like way, leaving the viewer to shape and imbue with meaning as they wish.

Her new work, Closer is a series set within transitional spaces that exist in urban environments such as development sites, empty blocks of land, playing fields and waterways. Here, out of place objects intervene with the landscape, setting odd dramas into action. Have these objects come to life or are they the remains of some unusual event? Ships and pillows become metaphors for our hopes and dreams. Cameras speak of how we each frame the world. Ultimately, we struggle to bring ourselves Closer to our human hopes and aspirations.

www.katebernauer.com