We were very fortunate when Kathy Holowko’s residency at St Columba’s College coincided with an Installation she was commissioned to do for the Atrium at Federation Square titled BATMANIA. The installation saw around 200 bat sculptures suspended from the huge glass atrium celebrating the fruit bats who are local residents of Melbourne and live just 5kms from Federation Square.
Kathy shared her ideas about her installation with our students and then set up workspaces that allowed them to contribute to the artwork. Whether it was creating bats from Modroc, using heat guns on garbage bags to shrink and wrinkle the plastic to mimic wings, or learning the technique of ‘flocking’ to create a textured body, the students at St Columba’s learnt a great deal about the working process of an artist. Click the link to read more about Batmania.
A bit about the artist... Kathy Holowko / Sculpture BA / Fine Art MA I love sculpture, and its many dimensions. I am torn between utopia and dystopia, marveling and questioning nature and humanity. I am interested in the effects that urban life has upon our understanding of ecology. In busy, human centric environments, I search for narratives and connections that can help reconsider our world as a cyclical, and shared habitat.
In my work I have told tails of romance, searched for evidence of the evolution of beauty, camouflaged snakes into city buildings, made wild urban animals visible in public space, I’ve been on safari through a human-made wilderness, untangled transgenic trends in insect fibres and explored piece of mind in the age of plastic. I do this on my own, and in collaboration with artists, museums, ecologists, rangers, wild life carers, scientists, industry and other humans of all scales. I believe in the power of art to help learn, to think, to meditate … and it is my way to mirror cultural environmental ideologies in the hope of building positive future visions. I create sculptural works, installations, public art and playful projects in a variety of media. I find great beauty in making, and use the material that is right for the concept, transforming material matter in order to explore ideas, process information, and share my findings.