Kat Austen is a person. In her artistic practice, she focuses on environmental issues. She melds disciplines and media, creating sculptural and new media installations, performances and participatory work. Austen’s practice is underpinned by extensive research and theory, and driven by a motivation to explore how to move towards a more socially and environmentally just future. Austen has exhibited and performed around the globe at renowned galleries, museums, festivals, and her work is held internationally in private collections.

Artist Statement:

What more do we need to know before we enact relations with others? And how do we need to know it?

My works interrogate the diffuseness of boundaries between the self and other(s), exploring engendering a sense of closeness or empathy with the other while contextualising these connections within global systems. Considering the self as a minded-body, my work explores embodiment, rhythm and flow as forms of knowledge that allow us to sense connections with other(s). In this respect, the conceptual development of my work is informed by imaginings of chemical processes at boundaries, first encountered during my PhD in chemistry, which act as a foil against which to interrogate other unseen systems and processes. My primary focus is to make sense of the physical and sociopolitical motivations for the understanding of the self in what we term the environment, and the impact of this on both the idea of the self - identity - and on the other(s). These explorations take the form of sound works, installations and participatory performances that employ multiple senses to engender deeper, felt understanding of the artwork’s topic.