Jo Katsiaris

Wastelands
'Art works created solely from the discarded'

Oblivion II, 2017, found timber, acrylic, oil paint and rain water.
Installation shot Art Gallery on Darling, Sydney.

Oblivion, 2017, found timber, acrylic, oil and rain water, 80 x 60 x 7 cm.
Installation shot Art Gallery on Darling, Sydney.

Sacked, 2017, found jute coffee bags, paint, rust, rain water, plastic, paper, 310 x 225 x 225 cm.
Installation shot Bondi Pavilion Gallery, Sydney.

Jo Katsiaris held two recent exhibitions titled 'Wastelands' firstly at the Bondi Pavilion Gallery and ending last week at Art Gallery on Darling in Sydney.

Katsiaris' materials are salvaged from the streets of Sydney; the kerb and council cleanups. In doing this she is working in a long tradition of artists using found objects including Rosalie Gascoigne. However she is also stating 'rain' and 'rust' as a media along with paint as natural weathering processes are integrally incorporated into the work. She sites Arte Povera, Post-Minimalism and Reductive Art as references but by incorporating traces of natural phenomena upon made materials she is also referencing Land and Environmental Art. 

This methodology appears a fairly recent development, but her two pieces entitled 'Oblivion' speak not only of waste, recycling and finite resources but by their blank white state save for the ravages of time seem to also be suggestive of a possible future state when resources are scarce.