Catherine Ryan is an Australian artist, writer, performer and musician who works in media including performance, sound, text, video and installation. Her recent works examine how the imperative to be productive structures the experience of time under neoliberalism, as well as ways that concepts from musicology can provide fresh insights into the ecological crisis.
Her performance lectures blur the boundaries between traditional lectures and live performance, combining the informative and educational aspects of a lecture with the creative and expressive elements of a performance.
She has presented work at galleries and festivals in Australia and Europe, including Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne), Monash University Museum of Art (Melbourne), 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 for publications including Disclaimer and Meanjin.
Catherine’s 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.
Catherine is also a multi-instrumentalist who composes electronic music. She 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. She is currently undertaking a PhD in the School of Art at RMIT University.
Photo by Eugene Hyland
