About

My practice explores how our senses connect us to our surroundings, engaging with the immediacy of present time experience and the impermanence of existence. Working with tactile materials and embodied entanglements with place, my sculptural installations grow from a process of quiet observation to reflect on instability and fragility. By developing attentive focus and working with found, natural or everyday materials, I link sensate experiences of materiality and haptic thinking to evoke direct empathetic and palpable experiences of time, fluctuation and change.

Kath Fries' site-sensitive process often involves creating works in response to encounters with particular flora and fauna, like Apis melifera (western honeybee), Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushrooms), Ficus hillii (weeping fig tree) and Silybum marianum (Scottish milk thistle). Fries’ projects are usually embedded in a specific location such as the snow-blanketed countryside and forest in Hahmajärventie Finland; hanging swamps in the sandstone escarpments of Wollemi National Park; heritage conveyance buildings in Fremantle WA; attic ceiling-beams in a semi-demolished old Glebe terrace; the heritage listed wattle and daub Murray's cottage in Hill End; Walter Burley Griffin's Incinerator building in Willoughby; turn of the century industrial structures in Cremorne; old sections of the Rookwood Cemetery; abandoned areas in Gosford CBD; high tide line on the Strand beach in Townsville QLD; historical jail cells in The Lock-Up Museum Newcastle; vineyards in the Hunter Valley; the dry lakebed of Lake George NSW; and the hand-built mud-brick 1970’s buildings at Laughing Waters VIC. As such, Fries’ consideration of the nuances within ecologies of place magnifies the viewer’s experience of her work.

My home and studio are on the lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. I recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture – and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging – acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these places.




The copyright of all the artworks on this blog belong to Kath Fries (unless credited otherwise), please contact the artist if you wish to copy or reuse any images.