With a fascination for different materials Kate Hunter works in metals, ceramics, fibres, textiles, found objects – whatever she needs to tell an intended story. She lives on the edge of a mangrove estuary in Cairns, Queensland, and her body of work ‘Floral Oxygen’ is in response to her experience of the record flooding in Cairns.  

Mandala forms connect the body of work by shape and repetition, gracing the works with reverence, a quiet honouring of life, death and rebirth.  

“Nature has fascinated humanity forever. We revel in it’s beauty, fight its invasive tenacity, wonder, explore and marvel at it’s vastness. Like a tango, we dance with nature, celebrating all our gloriousness and vulnerability together. 

For me cyclone Jasper created liminal space, a silent awe of nature’s power, and a gratitude of survival.  

Nature mandalas from mangrove blossoms, pods and leaves, became my grateful prayers, my ancestors must have done this, it felt ceremonial and sacred. 

These moving meditations helped me to process the flooding torrent I witnessed at my door. 

Reflection of ancientness in chaos, the living poetry of beauty and creation, gracing the works with reverence, a quiet honouring of life, death and rebirth.”

This body of work is my heart foraging a future in the blue of space and the dark of time. Making these works hasn’t been a pre-designed process, it is an intuitive unfolding of thoughts, un-said things, a space outside of myself to honour unresolved emotions, not internalised or dismissed. Each piece a personal alchemy, a photosynthesis of healing.”