Catherine Wharfe

Description

My practice stems from a lens-based background and, more recently, employs performance in relation to video and photographic images. Drawing on the ambiguous nature of transitional states, the work aims to inhabit the grey area in between: theatricality and absorption, stillness and movement, interior and exterior, and the mundane and the Sublime.
The live event initiates the possibility of social interaction in a public space. This carries the potential of a chance encounter and the exchange of energy between the artist and the audience that is intrinsic to performance art.
Within my performances, the body is explored as a site that resists or incorporates strategies of control. Through the engagement of endurance and mental capacities, the nature and boundaries of art activity are playfully challenged. Using disciplines such as meditation and yoga, notions of transcendence through art and the role of the artist in society are gently teased out.

www.catherinewharfe.com