CATE MADDY

Cate’s work looks at a world driven by contradictions where consumerism and environmental awareness compete and the presence of man seems impossible to evade. “It is an interpretation of my image of myself as longing for but separate from nature and the idea of creating an artificial world to compensate.”

By collecting shapes from her local environment and using both traditional and urban culture materials like aerosol paint and graffiti pens Maddy creates a hybrid world much larger than the one she occupies. “I pursue a landscape aesthetic from an urban perspective. Hints of form and exaggerated colour, soft and hard edges, dark and light tone, opaque and translucent paint are important formal concerns in trying to create an emotive image influenced by notions of the sublime, the abyss and where I fit into the world.”

By a process of cutting and isolating parts of the original imagery, using layered shapes rather than depictions to render in a less defined yet persuasive way, the work lends itself to an associative response, playing on levels of recognition that inform how the picture is read and understood.