Katthy Cavaliere: Sedia rossa

Opening Reception Event: Thursday 22 February, 6pm with guest speakers in conversation: Art curator Daniel Mudie Cunningham with Grace Burzese, artist and Cavaliere Estate executor 

On View: 22 February-22 March 2024 

Organised by the Italian Cultural Institute of Sydney, Sedia Rossa is a focused survey of artworks and archival videos by the Italian-born Australian artist Katthy Cavaliere (1972–2012), and has been is curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, an artist, curator, art critic and lecturer at the National Art School in Sydney.

Practicing in Sydney from the mid-1990s until shortly before her untimely death, Cavaliere’s lifelong project of transforming her personal possessions into art rendered her private life public through works fashioned from everyday objects like chairs and clothing. Working across photography, video, drawing, performance and installation, Cavaliere made sense of her place in the world through diaristic self-analysis as part of her artistic process, exorcising the past as a waking dream. Sedia Rossa assembles photographs and videos, alongside previously unexhibited family archival material, spanning from childhood in 1976 to one of her final works, nest (2010), created two years before her untimely death.

Katthy Cavaliere: Sedia Rossa will be the first exhibition of three archival videos; 6 anni (1978; a Super 8 film depicting a scene from her childhood birthday party); Milano (2002; a video diary made during a studio residency in Milan); and sedia rossa (2002; a poignant video diary documenting her artistic and romantic attachments during the same Milan period).

The motif of the chair, a recurring trope in Cavaliere’s work, unifies the material selected for this exhibition. For Cavaliere, the chair was a symbol of solitude, isolation, and the suspension of time for private reverie and personal ritual. In her iconic work, suspended moment (2000), a glowing toy chair floats within a black void, suggesting what can be made visible and invisible.

Born in Sarteano, Tuscany in 1972, Katthy Cavaliere migrated from Italy to Australia with her family when she was four years old. As a Sydney artist she came to prominence soon after graduating from the art school at the University of NSW (then known as College of Fine Arts). In 2000 she was the recipient of the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship at Artspace, enabling her studies in Italy at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Brera, Milan. During this time in Italy, she studied under Marina Abramović.

In 2011, her work was included in the 54th Venice Biennale. Following her death in January 2012, the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart presented her retrospective Loved in 2015-16. Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, it toured to Carriageworks, Sydney in 2016 and was accompanied by an extensive career-spanning book. In 2020-21, Cavaliere’s work was curated into Know My Name at the National Gallery of Australia.

The Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship was formed in 2019. Awarded to three Australian women artists working at the nexus of performance and installation – Frances Barrett, Sally Rees and Giselle Stanborough – the fellowship enabled the ambitious commissioning of major works presented at Carriageworks, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and Museum of Old and New Art between 2020-22, with a national tour including key Cavaliere works following in 2022-24.It was Cavaliere’s desire to bring to light what she did not remember of her early years in Sarteano that motivated her lifelong project of packing, storing and transporting the wreckage of her personal possessions, and transforming it into art that has been exhibited in solo and group shows internationally.

https://katthycavaliere.com.au/

Booking (essential) for opening on 22 February: