Cathy Carter’s Weird Fishes

Reading the curatorial statement for a body of work is one of the best ways to gain an insight into it. In D-Photo 89 we talk to Cathy Carter about her latest series, Weird Fishes, but below, as a taster and an introduction, we’ve shared the curatorial statement from Cathy’s Werid Fishes exhibition in Auckland in late 2018:

This exhibition of photography and installation takes its title from a song on Radiohead’s 2007 album ‘In Rainbows’. Through Carter’s psychedelic imagination the exhibition considers weird fishes as a metaphor for humans beings, referencing our origins in the oceans and whose life begins in a liquid pool. The title also refers to individual responses to growing evidence of these fluid ecosystems under threat as we enter the Anthropocene. As ‘weird fishes’ we nevertheless each have an opportunity to reconnect with the natural world of which we are a part. Carter’s work explores bodies of water as physical, cultural, and unique environmental ‘landscapes’. Carter’s practice investigates our complex psychological relationship to water through different perspectives and geographical locations. She uses perspective and perception to create new ways of experiencing these spaces. Carter is inspired by Alberto Giacometti’s observation: ‘The object of art is not to reproduce reality but to create a reality of the same intensity.’

Click through to see more photos from the exhibition itself.

See the feature by Mareea Vegas in D-Photo 89.