In a series of twenty photographs, Lost objects documents the chair-like objects Kath Foster made between 1980 and 2006. Also displayed is Reproportioned Table No.10 recently acquired by Mahara Gallery, from her series of 17 tables. The chair and table series form part of a larger project in which Kath raises questions about how we inhabit our domestic spaces.
Kath was born in Warkworth, North Auckland in 1974, to parents mural-painter John Foster and sculptor Pat Foster. At the age of six, she made a chair to sit on at her workbench in her parents’ workshop. This became the first chair-like object in the series. These works asked the question, ‘is there such a thing as the essence of a chair?’ Each one increasingly stripped away structure and eventually tended toward dematerialization.
Kath holds a Bachelor of Arts (Design Studies) from Victoria University of Wellington, She was awarded the Chartwell Trust Student Art Writing Prize in 2010. She has also tutored design history and theory at VUW, and is a custodian of the art-works of her late parents.