Katie Lee

A central concern within my practice is to use an intuitive sculptural language to investigate structures in the built world.  In particular I look at structures that have an inherent tension within their make up and their role semantically, socially or formally.  This can occur materially (elasticity v. resistance); politically and socially (the normative v. the liberal) and spatially, (structure v. transversality). One overt example of this is the way that structures of coercion in the built world relate to the body. Therefore, commonly I have looked to architectures of bodily discipline, ranging from the delineation of public space to the choreography of bodies by urban design. These spatio-visual codes become the basis on which I create a set of sculptural forms within an art gallery context or site.  The sculptural forms often mimic the original structures, however like any simulacra there is a slippage and in my case- revision back the psychological.  

Born in Tasmania, where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1998, Katie Lee has lived and worked in Melbourne since 2000. Katie has since completed a Postgraduate Diploma of Education (2001), Honors in Fine Art (2004) and a Master of Arts (2009) at RMIT, while regularly exhibiting both in Melbourne and overseas.  Katie has spent time in Vietnam where she worked and exhibited independently in 2003/4 and returned as a resident artist with Asialink in 2007.  She teaches in the Sculpture department and the Architecture and Design Foundation Studies program at RMIT.