‘Look What I Found, Buenos Aires’

The talismanic qualities of the reused, the resourceful, and the strange come together in Hannah Cutts’ work to celebrate an inseparability of life and art. In a truly Duchampian twist on evaluating what is unique, finding is the creative act for her, and thus she amasses carefully chosen, commonplace objects to suggest a poesis of the many. As a photographer, she travels to third world cultures to document ordinary life: once arrived she contracts with artisanal craftspeople to produce handmade artworks, thus actively revisiting notions of the exchange of money for labour and how art is made.

Interchange, repetition and transformation are her focal points -- whether occurring in Nature’s rhythms or within the ebb and flow of capital relationships. For Cutts, recognizing little distinction between high and low culture leads to present awareness, and translates into a vital engagement with life’s imperfectability. The orgiastic infinity transmitted by consumer culture and within Nature herself acts as a starting point for reappraisal of the original, and in turn of the concept of free will. 

Hannah holds a Bachelor of Art in Visual Communication, Griffith University, Design College of Australia, a Certificate in Design Studies, Architecture from University of Queensland and an International Baccalaureate, United World College of the Atlantic, Wales Bachelor of Modern Literature, Sussex University. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally and is included in Artbank’s collection. Carol Schwarzman