Alta Forma presents: Still Life and Peaches,
Katie Collins and Anna Varendorff, 2025
5 February - 1 March, 2025
Call and response between the body, jewellery and objects…
Alta Forma is delighted to present a series of duo, collaborative and symbiotic exhibitions for 2025. We are looking forward to sharing this dynamic program with you. Our first exhibition of the year showcases two new bodies of work by Naarm based artists Katie Collins and Anna Varendorff. ‘Still Life’ by Katie Collins and ‘Peaches’ by Anna Varendorff, illustrate the affinity between the artists’ practices. Through unique and skilful fabrication both utilise repeating abstract forms and geometries in their artwork. They incorporate distinct approaches to mechanisation, concepts of interaction, and call and response between the body, jewellery and objects.
Please join us for the opening celebration of Still Life and Peaches on Saturday 15 February from 3-5pm. All welcome.
About ‘Still Life’, Katie Collins:
‘This project explores our engagements with objects, their stories, materiality and connections. Taking the form of vessels, these artworks demonstrate how objects can be more than they seem at first glance. Objects often lay in wait, patiently for our attention, and can reward our curiosity. As these vessels rest upon their surfaces their forms appear to be known, but through interaction, they reveal their ability to change proportion and form. Each seemingly decorative connection and component provides a function. Suggestions of movement are present in the mechanical details; not hidden or secret but requiring a closer look and engagement from the viewer. Shifting from short to tall and back again, I hope to encourage a closeness between person and object. These changing profiles remind us of the complexities of the lives of objects and the embedded stories they hold.’ Katie Collins, 2025.
About ‘Peaches’, Anna Varendorff:
‘Bulbous forms, rising up and rounding out, are repeated and ongoing motifs in my jewellery. These forms express inherent generosity and are the dominant geometries in the jewellery I make and wear for myself. Presented alongside the jewellery are two wall sculptures, bright taxi yellow: large, hard and squared off. The wall sculptures use found materials, reconfigured with the techniques of jewellery making, re-emerging as sculptures that invite us to review how we understand the utilitarian things around us. ‘Peaches’ presents two aspects of practice linked through labour, fabrication and technique, and the aesthetics of abstraction.’ Anna Varendorff, 2025
About the artists:
Katie Collins is a maker of jewellery and objects based in Naarm/Melbourne. She is a graduate of RMIT, completing bachelor honours degrees in Interior Design and Fine Art, specialising in Gold and Silversmithing. Her work has been selected for national and international exhibitions, including the Itami International Craft Exhibition in Japan, Mari Funaki Award Exhibition in Australia and Talente in Germany. She is a sessional lecturer at RMIT University. In 2014, Katie exhibited her jewellery pieces at Galerie Marzee, in the Netherlands, where she received the Marzee International Graduate Prize. Her work is included in permanent collections in the Dallas Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Victoria.
Anna Varendorff is an artist, designer and educator working in Naarm/Melbourne. Her practice engages with sculpture, installation, object design and jewellery. Anna has exhibited in Australia and internationally since 2004, including at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), in Milan for Salone del Mobile in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in 2008. She has created large public works for Brisbane City Council and various private clients. In 2016, Anna founded the ACV design studio. ACV studio has received local and international recognition, including the Wallpaper* designer of the year award in 2018 for ‘Glass Half Full Vase’.
