Katthy Cavaliere’s work ‘Untitled home’ (2007) is a documentation of an installation, and a poetic use of everyday objects and the artist’s own presence. For this installation, Cavaliere piled inflated plastic bags onto a trolley that sits on top of flattened cardboard boxes. The dramatic backlighting is reminiscent of Baroque still life, however the image utilises contemporary objects. While Cavaliere’s physical body was not present in this installation, each plastic bag was inflated by the artist and contained her breath.
The work explores recurring motifs in Cavaliere’s practice, such as the idea of home and the transience of homelessness. The composition evokes the fragility and precariousness of living on the streets, where private acts are made public, and cardboard boxes, used so often to move home, are repurposed to create a vulnerable and basic shelter. It highlights the unstable nature of being homeless; always being in a state of transition.
(2018)
Chromogenic prints are printed on paper that has at least three emulsion layers containing invisible dyes and silver salts. Each emulsion layer is sensitive to a different primary colour of light (red, green or blue). The development process converts the hidden dyes to visible colour depending on the amount of light it was exposed to. This type of paper is commonly used to print from colour negatives or digital files to produce a full-colour image. It can also be used to print black-and-white images, giving softer grain and less contrast than gelatin silver prints. Commonly known as c-type prints, chromogenic processing was developed in the 1940s and widely used for colour printing, including for domestic snapshots. While recent years have seen this process accompanied by ink-jet and digital printing technologies, chromogenic printing still remains in use to this day.
