Bronwyn Katz makes delicate sculptures and installations from both natural materials such as iron ore and salvaged manufactured materials such as mattresses, steel wool scrub brushes, and corrugated steel. Her buoyant compositions appear hung on walls as multi-dimensional paintings, laid across floors like topographical landscapes, and hanging from ceilings or protruding from the ground up like so many stalactites and stalagmites. Katz uses found materials to draw on the physical, emotional, and spiritual history of their making. While she is driven by formal concerns expressed in an abstract, minimal language, her wire works paint evocative and specific stories. Her sculptures refer to the political context of their making by embodying subtle acts of resistance that draw attention to social constructions. Katz’s ongoing use of found mattress springs and other household materials refers to domestic life – specifically the intimate space of the bed, which is often the site for conception, birth, and death. Gõegõe (2021) is a new, large sculpture made from found bedsprings and black pot scourers. Placed on the floor, the six- metre-wide work is named after a mythical water snake that is known by many different names in the mythology of many South African peoples. For Katz, the snake becomes a metaphor for our contemporary extractive relationship with the Earth and other living creatures.
Melanie Kress
