Oron Catts: Life as a New Artistic Palette

Realising that (the concept of) life is going through some radical transformations; artists have been experimenting with ways of articulating these shifts. This talk will cover some of the strategies and projects that artists at SymbioticA have employed to deal with life as both raw material and an ever contestable subject of manipulation. Looking at all levels of life—from the molecular to the ecological, this talk attempts to present the need to develop a new cultural language where words seem to be no longer appropriate.

Oron Catts is an artist, researcher and curator whose pioneering work with the Tissue Culture and Art Project, which he established in 1996, is considered a leading biological art undertaking. He is the founding Director of SymbioticA (since 2000), an artistic research centre at The University of Western Australia and winner of the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Hybrid Art. Selected in Thames & Hudson’s 60: Innovators Shaping our Creative Future, Oron’s work reaches beyond the confines of art, often being cited as an inspiration in areas as diverse as new materials, textiles, design, architecture, ethics, fiction and food.

Oron was a Research Fellow in Harvard Medical School, a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University, a Visiting Professor of Design Interaction, Royal College of Arts, London, and a Visiting Professor at Aalto University’s Future Art Base, Helsinki, where he helped to set up a biological art lab called BiofiliA - Base for Biological Art and Design.

This special Wednesday lunch lecture is FREE and open to the public. Pizza lunch will be provided. Oron Catts is a Bickford visiting artist for the Sculpture + Expanded Media Department.

Victimless Leather, Oron Catts. Image courtesy of the artist.