Kate Karaula is a mixed media artist based in Bayside Melbourne. Having grown up at the base of The Dandenong Ranges and then spending the last 15 years by Port Phillip Bay, her work is grounded in nature and the interplay of humanity with it. Kate finds herself constantly fascinated by the ever evolving dynamic between the urban and natural environments – harmonious, violent, symbiotic, at odds, beautiful, ugly, breathy and cramped – sometimes all at once.

With an insatiable appetite for learning and fascination with human nature, Kate has explored multiple mediums, subjects and techniques over the years most of which play a cameo role at some point in her textile and fibre pieces. Her  formal study of Photography forms the foundation for the techniques and unique expressions that she has developed through experimentation and courses since she moved into her studio in 2016.

Kate works predominantly in hand-crafted, thrifted and natural materials, from deconstructed clothing and found objects through to hand-spun yarns and botanically dyed fabric (both of which she does herself). This hands-on approach to the creation of the individual parts results in them lending their own story and energy to the work as a whole.

Her current exploration, “No Safe Harbours”,  is an expression of the space where urban and natural elements meet and interact; where they clash and create a whole new form together, liquid and fluid yet still bound by time, forms and laws of Mother Nature and the impact of human existence. Key to the exploration is the emotions this invokes, the conflict, the picking up and putting down of a state of being as a sea wall or tar road is crossed to the wide open water.