Claudia Terstappen combines photography and ceramics to reflect on our idea of nature as timeless, thinking about how wilderness is variously worshipped, exploited and protected. She asserts that “juxtapositions between two- and three-dimensional works and the different characteristics of the two mediums allow me to move between imagined and real places.”
Terstappen goes on to say, “[In] my work I react to specific aspects of my surroundings as found in architecture, or the natural environment. There are often particular shapes, colour combinations or compositions that stay with me, and that later get translated or incorporated into my sculptures. This happens quite freely. I isolate these phenomena, often enlarge them, concentrating on particular aspects as a response to what I’ve seen, like articulating memory. Set between the visible and the imaginary, the works create tensions between organisms and abstract forms, remaining open to an infinite net of relationships between culture and nature.”
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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