August Friends Night | Cathy Zhang: Medium of Wonders

This Friends night join ceramicist, sculptor, and jewellery maker Cathy Zhang in conversation with art critic and writer, Sophia Halloway. Enjoy the pop-up exhibition Cathy Zhang: Medium of Wonders, held on campus at The Australian Centre on China in the World. 

Cathy Zhang’s artistic practice explores speculative human experiences, what is relational, and what is universal. Her work is based in the materiality of fine silver and clay, mediums she approaches with the intent to add to or subtract from a form. Concerned with the objecthood of wearable art and its relation to the human body, Zhang’s practice leads the viewer to explore elements of universal human experience. Her abstract and delicate forms play on the human tendency for psychological projection, acknowledging that viewers can relate to objects in highly personal and unique ways. Her delicate and complex hand-built works evoke memory, emotion, and curiosity. She often creates diptychs and triptychs to explore the aesthetic relationships between different objects. Employing the visual languages of fluidity and spontaneity, Zhang’s practice considers notions of sensory experiences across emerging physical and digital contexts.

Cathy Zhang is an artist, ceramicist, sculptor, and jewellery maker. She sculpts forms which oscillate at the edge of the functional and the speculative, taking cues from vessels and the human, environmental, and technological bodies behind their creation. Zhang graduated from the ANU School of Art & Design and is the recipient of multiple awards. She established her commercial project The Good Creation in 2016, drawing on her background in graphic design and her award-winning fabrication skills in metal and clay. Graduating in 2019, Zhang has exhibited in a number of group and solo shows including Negative Space at CCAS Manuka and Some-Thing at GAFFA in Sydney. She recently received the emerging artist award for her work in the Canberra Potters Society Members Exhibition 2020. Her work is held in the ANU Art Collection. 

Cathy Zhang: Medium of Wonders is a two week solo presentation of emerging artist and ANU Alumna Cathy Zhang at the ANU Centre on China in the World Gallery.

Image: Cathy Zhang, Instant Noodles? Enoki? Konjac in Wonderland, 2023, fine silver, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.