Katherine Hattam APW/JNHAT Lithography Scholarship Recipient 2020/21

The scholarship provided a valuable opportunity for Katherine to realise ideas and images from her painting and drawing practice through the medium of lithography. Katherine was mentored by APW Printers to produce two new works in the lithographic medium. Both works included the production of two hand-drawn lithographic plates using a combination of traditional lithographic pencils and touché wash. Each work was printed in two colours and incorporated elements of hand colouring and collage. Katherine’s bold lithograph works explore themes of self – past, present, and future.

With Melbourne’s extended pandemic restrictions, the scholarship was awarded over 2 years, requiring flexibility by the artist and the APW. In 2020, Katherine was unable to work in at the APW studios. However, APW Printers were able to deliver lithographic plates and materials to her Melbourne studio, where she completed key drawings on the litho plates. During this period, APW Printers connected remotely with Katherine, assisting her with any technical issues that arose.

In between lockdowns in 2021, Katherine was able to access the professional lithography facilities offered at the APW lithography studio and to gain first-hand experience of working with APW’s highly skilled Printers, completing the hand colouring of the lithographs in November 2021.

The James Northfield Lithography Scholarship offered Katherine the opportunity to work in collaboration with APW Printers to learn the complex process of lithography and to complete a suite of new lithographic prints. Katherine will be exhibiting her work in the APW Gallery in 2022.

Katherine has exhibited regularly since holding her first exhibition in 1978. She is highly regarded for her drawing and painting practice. Her work centres on the dialects of domesticity, family, and self. Katherine employs repetition as a tool for revelation, with the themes of family, feminism, education, literature, and the role of the unconscious strong components of her art making.

Katherine was an Australia-China Fellow with a studio at the Beijing Art Academy (2003 and 2005) and has won the Banyule and Robert Jacks Drawing Prizes, and has been short-listed many times in the Dobell Drawing Prize, the National Works on Paper Prize and Len Fox and Arthur Guy and Geelong Gallery Painting Prizes. She holds a BA in Literature and Politics from the University of Melbourne, an MFA Painting from VCA and a PhD from Deakin University.

Her work is held in the public collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery, University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Artbank, Heide, Art Gallery of South Australia, Deakin and La Trobe Universities, Warrnambool Art Gallery and Bendigo Art Gallery and private and corporate collections.