POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

'Animal wallpaper' by Kate Rohde

Object No. 2017/38/1

This is an artwork by Kate Rohde, a contemporary Melbourne-based artist and designer whose practice embraces art, craft, and design elements. To create 'Animal' Kate worked alongside Craft (Victoria) and Interior Productions to produce a limited edition series of bespoke wallpaper. Kate is recognised as a leading Australian maker who creates decorative objects, jewellery, wallpaper, interiors, sculpture, fashion. She is well-known for combining historical decorative motifs and contemporary materials, in this case digital design technology to produce both hardcopy wallpaper and a digital file for ongoing reproductions. Her investigations into the changing nature and perception of decorative arts blurs traditional boundaries between design, decorative art and fine art that is reflective of our time. Kate is recognised for working in 2-D and 3-D formats to create works that strongly reference historical precedents and convey a strong creative voice of her own, using both figurative and ornamental motifs. She has developed a highly recognisable signature style which at this point in time demonstrates a sophistication and understanding of plasticity, materials and technique. Serving as an interior design function, the wallpaper is a way of dressing a room and also a way to manipulate space. The excesses of the pattern and high key colour create an almost psychedelic effect enhanced by the forms of bird, fantastical beasts (mutant kittens), antlers and floral patterns repeating through a sequence of colour gradients including vibrant pinks, yellows and blues. The overt references to decorative arts from the Baroque and Rococo periods in this work, as with her other work in the collection, Deer Vase, have a number of meaningful associations with historical objects already in the MAAS collection. Katie Dyer Curator, 2018