The Australian artist Cat Wilson recently featured her debut of “From Fez to Casablanca” at the center stage of the “So Art Gallery” in Australia. The “So Art” Gallery is located in Australia’s southern coastal town of South Wales and provides an intimate space for artists to exhibit their work. The gallery is also home to the annual River of Art Prize Exhibition.
Cat Wilson’s “From Fez to Casablanca” exhibition introduced visitors to the North African kingdom’s rich heritage through cyanotype prints and digital collages. Her work’s inspiration originated from her life in Morocco from 2014-2017. “I love new technologies and the possibilities they open up. But I am also drawn to the methodical, meditative and repetitive process of making things by hand,” said Wilson at the exhibition’s opening,” claims Wison.
“My time in Morocco, in the two very different cities of Fez and Casablanca resulted in two series of works. Both are studies of pattern and form that explore the tension between the drive towards modernity and nostalgia for the past,” she added.
Cat Wilson’s creative work began during her stint as a freelance director and dramaturg, then during the last 15 years, she moved into video and photo media work, concentrating on both digital and alternative photography mediums.
As a theatre director, Wilson was fascinated by the way repetition transformed the viewer’s experience over time. This led to working with time-lapse & exploring the camera as a time machine providing the ability to perceive events beyond the human scale. Her subjects are often inspired by nature or the environment within which she finds herself. She looks for ways to use repetition and time dilatation to transform familiar objects, so they can be seen anew, creating works that are at once familiar yet unexpected.
Cat Wilson is known for her work in the fields of photography and geometry. During her stay in Morocco, she studied traditional Islamic geometric designs, a hallmark of the country’s art world that she now incorporates into her own works. Along with the country’s rich heritage, Wilson also discovered a society that is rapidly moving towards modernity, particularly in the financial capital, Casablanca.
Using digital photographs of Casablanca’s striking architecture, Cat’s striking collages explore the tension between the traditional and the modern. The Exhibition “From Fez to Casablanca” reveals Morocco’s rich heritage and the country’s fascination with Westerners as a destination for art and design.