Born in 1952 and raised in Sydney, Catherine Cloran graduated from the National Art School, East Sydney Technical College, in 1974. After completing a Diploma of Education the following year, she began teaching visual art in secondary schools with the NSW Department of Education. She helped to create an art department at the then new Murray High School in Albury, before leaving to travel to Europe in 1978.
When she returned to Australia a year later, Cloran moved to the Blue Mountains and built a mud brick house where she raised her family. In 1980 she became a teacher with the Adult Migrant English Service (AMES) and remained there until 1997. In 1999 Cloran had the opportunity to resume her art studies; she completed a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts, honours) degree at the University of Western Sydney in 2001. She later participated in voluntary work in Blacktown Arts Centre, assisting the Director in administration, reception, exhibition installation and curatorial work.
Driven by a desire to experience difference, in August 2003 Cloran moved to Hong Kong. While there she studied by distance learning for a Master of Visual Arts at Monash University, Melbourne, (completed 2006). Responding to the disjunction between living in densely populated Hong Kong and the vast Blue Mountains prompted her to observe the juxtaposition of objects, especially the way nature and high-rise buildings synchronise in a tight urban setting. The limited studio space and fast pace of life in Hong Kong led Cloran to use a digital camera for her conceptual and documentation work.
During her four year stay in Asia, she worked on seven series: displaced; flotsam and jetsam; nature/culture; china dreaming; w indows of the world; vertical; and composite images . In these series, she enlarged small common details in everyday life, giving the viewer hints to envision the larger picture. For example, in flotsam and jetsam , Cloran took pictures of odds and ends such as lighters and plastic forks found along the coastline to present the idea of dislocation. These series were displayed separately in both Hong Kong and Australia.
Cloran has received several awards including the Cultural Diversity Art Prize, Western Sydney (1996), and was highly commended at the Blacktown City Art Prize (2004).
In early 2008 Cloran began working as a casual lecturer in Photography at the Centre for Continuing Education, Sydney University. The course presents the development of photography from the nineteenth century to contemporary use of the medium.
Cloran works from her studio in St Peters, inner-western Sydney.
- Writers:
- Vivian, Wong
De Lorenzo, Catherine
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2011
