Katy Woodroffe
Katy Woodroffe is a Tasmanian artist who lives and works in Hobart. She has exhibited widely within Australia and overseas. She has won numerous awards, including the $20,000 Bay of Fires Art Prize in 2017. In the same year she was also a finalist in the Burnie Print Prize and the Muswellbrook Prize. In 2016 she was selected in the prestigious Sulman and Blake Prizes in Sydney and was previously featured in several other major events including the Glover and Whyalla Prizes and the Lethbridge Award,
In 2013 she gave a special presentation and address in Rome as winner of the international Beholding Beauty Art Prize. Other recent involvement in overseas exhibitions include a solo show and floor talk at the Saffron Walden Gallery, England, as well as representations in international art fairs in Stockholm, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Battersea, Brussels, Milan, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong. She also had prints exhibited in Spain, England and France, and won the special prize at the Lessedra World Print Annual in Bulgaria in 2014.
Residencies in Paris, Greece, India and Spain have provided inspiration and vibrancy to her evolving practice with her most recent experience at the Art Vault in Mildura.
Josephine’s Swans at Malmaison
The symbolic contrast of light and dark in Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, suggest a world of good and evil. The black and white swans are opposites which perhaps reflect the distance between their European and antipodean habitats (Echoes in the Shadows). The works in this series have been inspired by these swans with glimpses into the life of Josephine, the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1804 Nicolas Baudin’s expedition to Australia (and Van Diemen’s Land) brought back exotic flora and fauna, including black swans to Josephine’s idyllic garden at the Chateau Malmaison in Paris. Her vision and significance as a gardener played an important role in the natural history of France and she had a particular passion for roses.
The swans became the most celebrated creatures in the park and visitors flocked to see them from all over Europe. They roamed at liberty with other birds and animals and were often featured in early illustrations of the lake.
Josephine became the first person in history to successfully breed the black swans in captivity, and they became her unofficial emblem, with many swan decorations featured inside the chateau. The problem she had with providing Napoleon an heir is a bittersweet parallel story and this has been part of the narrative.
The black swans existed simultaneously in both France and Tasmania during this time…a ‘black swan’ was used to describe the impossible: because every swan was white: until…..
