Reflections on the past, present & near future....
My mother's legacy, her gift to me of a sewing
machine on my eighth birthday, has underpinned my art career over the past
decades. Originally I studied for a Diploma in Fine Art which was completely classical art training such as life drawing, sculpture and painting. These
disciplines were explored in depth over five years. My youthful impatience, unruly nature and a thirst for experience in the real world soon had me looking
at ways of finding and defining myself.
Living on red capsicum, rice and pate, I
painted a body of work that I took to a suburban art dealer at a gallery near
my parents' home. His reception was so alarmingly negative that I vowed never
to show my paintings again. This shadow of doubt hung over me for over 20
years...
In the meantime, I chose to still work with
paint but on textiles - painting on fabrics and cutting them into clothing that
incorporated sculptural elements. This was a successful fusion of my love for
dressing up with the role of social provocateur. In my twenties I was driven to
succeed and I worked obsessively... Creating clothing that drew on past
expressions and the traditional but I broke the boundaries of the past and
incorporated a contemporary context. As the years passed some of my work was
collected by The National Gallery, Powerhouse
Museum and the National
Gallery of Victoria and I became well known for clothing design.
In 1982 I received an Australian National
Visual Arts Board grant for studio space in Besozzo, a village just outside of Milan, Italy.
The three month stay became a point of change in my career as an Artist & Designer. Although I went there with
the vague desire to be discovered and to enter the international world of
fashion, the self-reflection within the isolation of the studio revealed to me
a whole new direction of self enquiry.
This new direction began with a certainty and
conviction to seek truth, a non-dual point where God and man are in union. A
place where the ethereal world of duality and material world of 'stuff'
dissolves to reveal eternal beauty and purity. This journey offered no road
signs for me but over the next few years it would lead me to the wisdom
teachings of the East. In particular, I was drawn to India and the scriptural practices
of the Vedic path of discrimination.
As my interest in this esoteric direction
grew, my obsession for worldly success gave way to a desire to live a life of
family and career in balance. In 1990, after the death of my first husband, I left Sydney with my then 5-year-old son Morgan to live in Brisbane.
My early family history is associated with Brisbane
through the 1894 arrival of my great grandfather (Colonel Thomas Pye) who
worked as one of Brisbane's
Colonial Architects for 30 years.
Since moving to Queensland I have devoted my time primarily
to family life, my marriage to Steven Hein and to raising our daughter Montana
Rose Hein. I was also actively involved in study and in the establishing and
running of a meditation group.
In 1997 I decided to paint for a year and have
an exhibition to untie the knots of my past vow not to show my paintings. In
1998 I had my first solo exhibition of oil paintings in Brisbane. This was very successful and well
received.
Late October 2004 marked the pleasure and joy
of opening of my own store, Katie Pye Clothing Gallery at Paddington, Brisbane. During May 2007
I opened my second store in Surry Hills, Sydney.
My art practice continues and has always
involved multiple disciplines, moving between environmental installations, the
intimate architecture of clothing and the two dimensional surfaces of painting.
From October 2006 to January 2007 I exhibited a visual arts installation, Mantle of Beauty - Ceremony and
Contemporary Culture. From May 2007 to January 2008, the National Gallery
of Victoria are showing a retrospective of my designs they are calling Clothes for Modern Lovers. This show
charts my work from the late 1970s through to 1990 and is illustrative of my
constantly evolving design vocabulary. From rule-breaking, highly unorthodox
art wear that constantly challenged the conventional limitations of 'fashionable' dress to commercial ranges. Many outfits from the NGV collection
will be shown alongside photographic and video works.
Katie Pye
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