Claudia Terstappen

Claudia Terstappen studied German Literature and Philosophy at the Heinrich Heine University and Sculpture and Photography at the Art Academy in Duesseldorf, Germany and is now a practicing artist of more than 30 years standing with an impressive string of international exhibitions, awards and publications to her name. She has lived and worked in Germany, Great Britain, Spain, Hong Kong and the US.

Terstappen is not fixed on a particular medium but generally works with photography and sculpture.

Over many years her artistic work has focused on the interrelationship between religion, superstition and science in relation to place, culture and time. The values associated with nature, particularly of indigenous cultures, have made her reflect on and explore the dependency between the human race and the natural world, creating bodies of work that explore environmental changes, inevitably leading to destruction.

While her photographs are a direct response to her experience of being out bush, her sculptural works are more a translation of that experience into form. She navigates between natural and cultural forms that interest her. These can be perceived as both, isolations and enlargements of particular appearances. Set between the visible and the imaginary, they create certain tensions between organisms and abstract or architectural structures, remaining open to an infinite net of interpretations.

Claudia Terstappen studied sculpture and photography at the Art Academy Düsseldorf in Germany and moved to Australia in 2004. She has exhibited individually in diverse cities of Europe, the United States, Japan and Australia, and her work joins such collections as Museum Houston in Texas, Fundación Rafael Tous in Barcelona, Osaka Prefectual Government in Japan, Warrnambool Art Gallery in Australia and Museum DKM in Duisburg, Germany. She has received many awards and prizes, including the Bronze Prize for Sculpture at the Triennale of Sculpture in Osaka, Japan, an open-air sculpture award at Landesgartenschau Hamm, Germany, and recently a University Fellowship in Hong Kong at the Baptist University Recent, where she stayed for 5 months. Claudia Terstappen lives and works between Barcelona and Melbourne.

 

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