Meet Kat Hannavy

We’d like to introduce you to Kat Hannavy (aka Katty Han). Kat is our May feature artist, and while she is originally from Launceston, her studio space is now the sundrenched front room of a Paddington Queenslander.

Nestled amongst the early stages of some recent commission work, she takes me through the methodology surrounding her practice. Most significantly, Kat’s Indonesian heritage is a consistent focus, and the continued exploration of this through visual narrative is something she describes as a long term commitment to herself. Growing up in Tasmania/Lutruwita, Kat remembers being acutely aware of herself as an ‘other’, and this disconnection from her heritage is something she is actively trying to reconcile.

Kat: As the first born child of an immigrant mother, I watched her slowly disconnect from parts of herself to assimilate with Western society, especially because Launceston is not very culturally diverse at all. There weren't really many other Asian kids around me, and I remember feeling really embarrassed to be 'different'. I really rejected that part of myself all of my youth, but since leaving Lutruwita I've met so many beautiful Indonesian people, shared stories with them, learnt from them, and realised that everybody has such a unique and personal connection to their own culture.

Encouraged in her art making from a young age by her grandmother, Kat uses her practice as a mode of self exploration. Purposefully sampling from Indonesia’s incredibly diverse culture of traditional Arts (which spans from Wayang shadow puppetry, carving, through to intricate textiles), an important stage of Kat’s process is to research and understand the imagery she adapts for her own work. This allows her to continuously interrogate the gaps in her growing knowledge of Indonesian culture, but also to develop a recognisable aesthetic that is dynamically balanced between the ancient and the new.

Kat: Throughout a lot of my more recent work especially, there is a heavy Indonesian influence, and painting has been a really beautiful way for me to explore my heritage and feel more connected to it. There are visual elements — like the kris dagger and the barong mask — that started to feel like powerful talismans to me. 

Kat’s paintings are large format visual narratives, and the childlike approach she takes to creating flat figure and decorative composition makes her work feel like illustrated fables. There’s archetypal relationships between the subjects that befit their traditional starting points, but they are also subversive, distorted, and decidedly cheeky. While Kat’s vernacular has all the features of a mythology — hybrid creatures and the hierarchy of the spiritual — their subject matter borrows heavily from her own lived experience. 

Kat: Symbols and visual story-telling have always been more important to me in my own practice than perfecting my technique, I think because my art has always been really personal, I use it as a way to express an emotion or situation I experienced, or to recount a narrative, so the process of painting and creating becomes an extension of myself.

Kat’s work is lively and engaging, and while she has been included in numerous small shows around Brisbane, she is interested by the growing opportunity for young practitioners to exhibit here in non-traditional ways. 

Kat: It’s great to see so many events that will be an art exhibit with live music, that then turn into a warehouse rave, or have an open mic to share poetry, or even a runway for a fashion show. The future of the creative scene is starting to leave the confines of a white walled gallery and I think this is a really positive thing that makes art accessible to anybody. It pushes event organisers to think outside the box and explore non-conventional spaces as places to hold shows and exhibits. This also opens the door to collaboration, and I think that is one of the main reasons that the Meanjin creative scene in particular feels more interconnected and welcoming than other cities, people are always finding a way to join forces on a project and platform each other.

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Check out Kat’s artwork at @lilkattyhan

Article by wonderful local arts writer Jessica McNicol @jemc & edited by @byfrances_

Photography by @rhiannajphillips