We are Catherine or Kate, visual artists from Brisbane. We met during our undergraduate studies at the Queensland University of Technology and have been working collaboratively since 2008.

We’d like to tell you about three projects we have underway this year:

1:  As part of the Australia Council’s JUMP mentoring program we will be spending a month in the UK with British duo Paul Harrison and John Wood. We have been fans of Harrison & Wood for quite some time and are extremely humbled that they have agreed to mentor us. During our time abroad we aim to begin an independent research project that seeks to collect accounts of co-authorship from select collaborative artists, comedy doubles and fictional pairs.

2.  Prior to departing for the UK, we are curating an exhibition of local and international artists at Metro Arts, in Brisbane, opening Wednesday 9 May, 2012. The exhibition explores notions of sea-faring, travel and humour and responds to our recent time in Iceland as part of a residency at Skaftfell Centre of Visual Art.

Central to the exhibition is the work of Ásgeir Jón Emilsson (nicknamed Geiri) (1931-1999), long-term resident of Seyðisfjörður. The youngest of twelve siblings, Geiri worked as a fisherman and outsider artist, making a proliferation of objects using aluminium cans and cigarette packaging. This exhibition will be the first showing of Asegir’s work outside of his home town Seyðisfjörður.

Exhibiting alongside Geiri’s work are Norweigan collaborators, Aipotu who were last in Australia for the 2008 Sydney Biennale. Our mentors Paul Harrison and John Wood have also agreed to be part of the project, as has local artist Joseph Breikers who, during his recent residency in Skagaströnd Iceland, explored the image of the slouching cowboy or outlaw.

We have created a Pozible campaign to help with the transportation costs of getting Geiri’s work to Brisbane.  It would be greatly appreciated if you could lend your support at Geiri by catherine or kate!

3.  Later in the year we would like to launch our Mazda 121 Car Residency program. We’ve put this project on the back burner numerous times but 2012 is its year! For this project we propose to undertake a residency in Kate’s Mazda 121. Living out of this small car for seven days we will traverse Brisbane but remain outside Translink’s bus zone 3.

During the residency we will visit local attractions and community venues in the hope of developing and circulating knowledge about locations that, as residents of the inner city, we are unfamiliar with. During the residency we will maintain an online journal recording descriptions and observations about the people and places we encounter. After the completion of the residency we aim to facilitate further car residencies amongst our peers and networks. By extending the project in this way we aim to build a library of artist accounts of outer Brisbane.

For more info you can check out our website CatherineorKate or visit us at Studio 3.2- Metro Arts, 109 Edward St.