Katy Wallace to create with $100k Craft/Object Fellowship

Gisborne designer Katy Wallace to create ‘a home away from home’ with $100k Craft/Object Fellowship

Creative New Zealand’s $100,000 Craft/Object Fellowship for 2017 has been awarded to Gisborne-based designer Katy Wallace.

Wallace will create, from scratch, a fully-operational caravan at full-scale that will explore the intersection of craft and design and address the notion of ‘a home away from home’.

Entitled Home Away From Home (KW Caravan MkII), this carefully crafted bespoke living space will bring together Wallace’s full range of design and making skills, innovative thinking and ability to engage audiences.

The fellowship provides established and senior New Zealand practitioners, curators and writers the opportunity to commit to a period of investigation, experimentation or research in their practice.

“Katy has a longstanding reputation as an original and innovative thinker who produces high-quality work,” says Creative New Zealand Senior Manager Arts Policy, Capability and International Cath Cardiff.

“We are excited to see how this unique project develops.”

“This is such a fantastic chance for me to solidify many years of conceptual practice into a total living space designed from the ground up,” says Katy Wallace.

“I feel very lucky to have this opportunity; it will be a significant point in my career.”

Wallace’s practice in recent times has focused on converting low-value materials ¬– such as discarded, broken and used furniture – into high-value, one-off works. Her work often evokes a feeling of nostalgia as it draws on design objects from a different era and then reworks them into contemporary objects.

The fellowship will offer her the opportunity to take a different approach.

“A complete build leaves the design space open to invent a new language for a contemporary home away from home,” she says.

In response to the lack of space in the average modern caravan, Wallace’s design will invent furniture that transforms the confined area to be both functional and inspiring.

“Furniture will have the potential to penetrate walls, push from inside to outside, hang and expand. The shell can be considered as an integral part of the furniture and not merely a skin.”

Once completed, Wallace intends for the caravan to tour New Zealand.

The Creative New Zealand Craft/Object Fellowship is awarded to established or senior practitioners, curators and writers working in traditional applied arts or contemporary practice. Previous recipients are: Dr Areta Wilkinson (2015), Garry Nash (2013), Baye Riddell (2011), Moyra Elliott (2009), Rangi Kipa (2006), Peter Lange (2005) and Malcolm Harrison (2004).

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