Catherine Truman is a medium agnostic. Not content to make work just to adorn the body, her practice critiques the culture, science and philosophy of the body - considering its physiology and interrogating its agency.
Melinda Rackham
Catherine Truman is known primarily for her intricately carved wood jewellery, the result of her studies in 1990 with contemporary netsuke carvers in Japan, but her practice has, since its beginnings, encompassed a dizzying array of materials and approaches to investigate her key interests of the body and its relationship to the wider world.
In recent years, particularly, Catherine's practice has taken leaps beyond jewellery and into installation, video and sculpture. As Melinda Rackham writes, "curiosity takes her and her makings into the sensate and unfamiliar - probing thesholds of human being." Her work slides between art and science, existing largely in realm of imaginative fantasy that drives both disciplines. Whether likening the striations of muscle to a red sea, or the drawings parallels between the light sensors in eyes to photosynthesis, Truman's enquiry speaks to a ravenous fascination with the corporeal world and our relationship to it. Aware that in scientific enquiry, each answer leads to another question, Truman's work is about process; she states "there are no neat conclusions."