Kate Bohunnis

COMA is pleased to present a solo presentation, titled ‘house that heaves’, by Adelaide-based artist Kate Bohunnis, on view 29 January  – 26 February, 2022 in the gallery. The exhibition is supported by The Government of South Australia through Arts South Australia.

Structurally speaking, ‘heave’ occurs when a building starts to rise above its original foundation due to underlying environmental disturbance. Rot begins at the core and then slowly spreads to the floor, walls and, finally, the ceiling. Left untreated, there is a risk of complete collapse. 

Kate Bohunnis’ latest exhibition, house that heaves, brings together new sculptural work that continues the artist’s exploration of what it means to create forms that combine and contrast metal and textiles. Bohunnis is interested in subverting our expectations of what the materials she works with can do and be. She is equally keen to challenge ideas of gendered labor and skill personally encountered in both steel manufacture and sewing crafts. Like a house that heaves, Bohunnis splits open the predetermined binaries laden within the materials she works with.

As a queer woman working between two industries— metal fabrication and [textile] craft—I find myself responding to the history of these traditionally gendered materials and subverting our expectations of what they do, and who should be doing it.

Kate Bohunnis

The exhibition features wall hangings and free-standing forms which juxtapose softness and fluidity with ideas of dominance, penetration, containment and division. Stainless steel serves as a framework for fluffy and sleek fabrics. The tubing has been purposefully over-rolled so that they buckle, minimising their strength. Hyper-feminine and luxurious fabrics have been patch worked together. Glistening and pearled in their dowdy opulence, these puffy forms have been pierced by the steel in a final effort to reduce and restrain. 

Kate Bohunnis works both with and against what she calls the “tired traditions” of gender stereotypes, creating steel and textile sculptures that inhabit a liminal zone between artificially imposed binaries.

_{‘Kate Bohunnis exposes our gender stereotypes in new solo’, Art Guide Australia, by Tracey Clement}

Kate Bohunnis (b. 1990) is an artist based in Adelaide/ Kaurna Yarta. Working in metal fabrication, mould making, textiles, print and sound; her installations focus on connecting the limits within and between material experimentation and analogous psychological states, structures and behaviours, our relationship to identity, gender and the queer perspective. This material performativity is either enacted on its own, or posturing and interacting with another to create a new structural system or tenuous imbalance. Bohunnis states that it is within this liminal space, moving towards and against a threshold, that we can find correspondence to our own psychological network of supportive and destructive systems.

Bohunnis is a graduate from Flinders University with First Class Honours. She has been awarded the Eran Svigos Award for Best Visual Art, David Hayden Professional Development Award, Watson Award, Arts Excellence in Printmaking Award and has completed national and international arts residencies. Bohunnis has exhibited at ACE Open, Firstdraft, BLINDSIDE, Praxis ARTSPACE, FELTspace, Sister Gallery, Holy Rollers, PICA and various group exhibitions throughout South Australia. Kate Bohunnis is the winner of Ramsay Art Prize 2021, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.