Catherine Ryan is an artist, writer and performer from Melbourne.
Catherine works in media including performance, sound, text, video and installation. She has exhibited at galleries and festivals in Australia and Europe, including Gertrude Contemporary, MUMA, the Royal College of Art (London), the Vienna Biennale and the Melbourne Art Fair. She has written accompanying creative and philosophical texts for a number of art projects, as well as miscellaneous pieces in academic and not-so-academic publications. Her work uses humour to prompt questions and debate about the present social order – particularly about gaps and silences in public discourse where urgent social issues are not confronted, or where the collective political imaginary has proven inadequate to the challenges of the present.
She has also appeared as a performer in a number of experimental works by other artists, including Aphids and Field Theory. She completed a Masters of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2016.
Since 2012, Catherine has had an ongoing collaborative artistic practice with Amy Spiers. Together, they work in site-specific installation and live and participatory performance, often employing aesthetics that are disruptive and absurd. Their works explore the control and policing of what is visible and invisible in public space.
Catherine holds a Masters of Contemporary Art from the Victorian College of the Arts and a Master of Arts in philosophy and critical theory from Monash University.