Catherine Coady is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, and installation. With wit and clarity she delivers her observations of our ever-active, ever-wandering minds. Her practice draws attention to what usually remains unseen: the looping inner dialogues, the restless labour of thought, the fragile masks we put on to appear composed while turmoil simmers beneath. Threaded through it all is the irony of life, where humour becomes a way to acknowledge the weight of being human while keeping it light enough to be shared.
Her pill sculptures sharpen this enquiry. Executed with precision and elegance, they play with the fantasy of quick fixes—the idea that there might be a pill for everything: for youth, for meaning. At once seductive and ironic, they mirror society’s faith in pharmaceutical shortcuts while exaggerating it to the point of absurdity. Their humour lies in this overstatement: objects so serene, so immaculate, they almost dare you to believe the impossible.
By contrast, her paintings are expansive and psychologically charged. Built through layering, scraping back, sanding, and rupturing, each surface becomes a record of process: labour, undoing, repetition, fleeting states of mind. Words loop compulsively, shifting from banal to manic; forms hover between presence and erasure. Her humour carries through here as well—phrases scratched into the surface often read like private mutterings, absurd in their repetition, both comic and unsettling. And among these shifting surfaces, gold appears again and again. Sometimes luminous and exposed, sometimes buried and almost hidden, it insists on its presence. Raised in Singapore, Coady grew up among gilded shrines, lacquerware, and ceremonial objects where gold signified reverence and transcendence. In her work it is not embellishment, but memory materialised—a quiet signal of the sacred within the fractured.
And at times, Coady brings her sculptural vocabulary into direct dialogue with her painting. Embedded pill forms interrupt the gestural field, serving as anchors or intrusions—moments of symmetry within turbulence, clarity within chaos. What emerges is not a fragment of mind but the full human theatre: the hidden battles, the tension between suppression and expression, order and unraveling, the nervous smile, the sense that things might blow at any moment. Coady gives form to this encounter between the inner and outer self—she shows how the mind kicks and curses, laughs at its own absurdity, blames the world for good measure—while on the outside the face stays straight, the body somewhat composed, the performance of balance dutifully maintained. It is this double act—storm within, composure without—that Coady renders with such sharp humour, turning struggle into satire and showing the absurd weight of what it means to hold it all together.
Artist Statement
“Over years of experimental exploration, I have pushed the boundaries of conceptual inquiry and embraced new technologies, leading to the creation of seemingly disparate bodies of work. However, beneath the surface, there exist enduring themes that unify my artistic endeavors. My art revolves around the notions of bodily control, experiences of detachment and augmentation, and the seductive allure of pharmaceutical solutions promising to alter our emotions and behaviors with a mere pill. These themes probe the complexities of our relationship with our bodies and the tension between societal expectations and our innate selves. Through my work, I aim to confront the dichotomy between our instinctual nature and the external forces that seek to manipulate and mold us. I challenge the notion that a quick-fix chemical solution can harmonize our mind and body, often at odds with each other. Instead, I strive for a deeper alignment between the two, recognizing the intricate interplay between our physical and mental states. Ultimately, my hope is to spark contemplation and dialogue about the fundamental connections between our minds and bodies, inviting viewers to question the prevailing narratives surrounding health, identity, and the pursuit of well-being”
- Catherine Coady -