About

Catherine Truman is an established artist working across the disciplines of art and science. She is co-founder and current partner of Gray Street Workshop- an internationally renowned artist-run workshop established in 1985 in Adelaide, South Australia, where she currently works and lives.

Truman’s practice is renowned for its diversity and incorporates contemporary jewellery, objects, digital image and film installation with a focus upon the parallels between artistic process and scientific method.

Qualified in the Feldenkrais Method of movement education, Truman has researched historical and contemporary anatomical collections world-wide and has participated in a number of art/science- based projects.

Between 2009 and 2013 she was artist in residence in the Autonomic Neurotransmission Laboratory, the Anatomy and Histology departments and the Ian Gibbins Microscopy Suite at Flinders University, Adelaide, receiving and ANAT Synapse grant in 2011.  

Truman was awarded an Arts South Australia Fellowship in 2016 and was selected as the 2016 SALA (South Australian Living Artist) feature artist. She is the subject of a SALA monograph- Catherine Truman: touching distance, written by Melinda Rackham, published by Wakefield Press. A major survey exhibition Catherine Truman  was held at  the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2016. 

In 2017 The Jamfactory, Adelaide presented a major solo exhibition Catherine Truman: no surface holds, highlighting her art/science practice as part of their Icon program, which toured nationally, 2017-2020. 

During 2019 she was visiting scholar at the Flinders Centre for Ophthalmology, Eye and Vision Research, School of Medicine, Flinders University and artist in residence at the State Herbarium and Botanic Gardens of South Australia undertaking a project titled The Visible Light Project: experiments in light and vision, investigating the creative parallels between the physiology of the human eye and plants. During February- May 2021 Truman responded to this research in a major exhibition titled Shared Reckonings, held at The Museum of Economic Botany and The Dead House, Botanic Gardens of South Australia as part of the Adelaide Festival, 2021.

During 2022/2023 Truman was artist in residence at Carrick Hill, undertaking a project titled The Arrangements:assembling nature. This project has culminated in a major exhibition of new work integrated into the rooms of the Carrick Hill house museum and the Wall Gallery, renamed The Assembly room for the duration of the exhibition. It is an official Adelaide Festival event.

See her blog for details.

In 2023 Truman was invited to participate in A Partnership for Uncertain Times. A year-long initiative instigated by Dr Deirdre Feeney , in partnership with University of South Australia and ANAT ( Australian Network of Art and Technology) Click here for more details

NB: All images that appear on this website are by Grant Hancock unless attributed otherwise.

Please click here for selected CV.