Kait James

Kait James is a proud Wadawurrung woman and award-winning contemporary artist.

Kait has a love of textiles, colour and embroiders kitsch found materials. Her current work focuses on presenting Indigenous perspectives with familiar pop-cultural references using Aboriginal Souvenir Tea Towels from the 1970-80s that generalise and stereotype her culture.

Using humour and vivid colours, Kait addresses the way white western culture has dominated Australia’s history, and how Australia and the world perceives our First Nations’ peoples. She endeavours to develop and use her art in ways that encourage responsiveness, unity and optimism within and beyond Indigenous communities.

Kait James’ Geelong Arts Centre artwork

Appearing on the external Western Façade of Geelong Arts Centre, proud Wadawurrung Woman and award-winning contemporary artist Kait James’ 193-panel work focuses on presenting Indigenous perspectives with familiar pop-cultural references using Aboriginal Souvenir Tea Towels from the 1970-80s that generalise and stereotype her culture.

Using humour and vivid colours, Kait addresses the way white western culture has dominated Australia’s history, and endeavours to develop and use her art in ways that encourage responsiveness, unity and optimism.

Sourcing her chosen canvas largely from op shops, Kait uses a punch needle to embroider over the top of Aboriginal calendar tea towels to change the narrative, give the tea towels new life, and give herself a voice. This careful and time-consuming method can see individual artworks taking up to a month to create.

To create the panels, Kait used high resolution images of her original artworks, scaled up and adjusted digitally to ensure the colour saturation matched the originals and that imagery was clear. ARM Architecture provided Kait with a panel template which made sure the images were the correct size and resolution. There are 23 different 'tea towel' artworks and to ensure the colours worked alongside each other avoid repetition, Kait spent many hours rearranging the panels both on paper and digitally before they were able to be printed onto the metal panels visible on the Geelong Arts Centre Western Façade.