#katemitchell

Kate Mitchell, All Auras Touch, 2020 Carriageworks, Sydney, Australia

Interestingly, Kate Mitchell has incorporated the Australian Census into her practice to produce her work All Auras Touch (2020) which brings about a unique viewpoint on employment in Australia and interconnections between workers and the artist. Using the main occupation list found in the Australian Census, and the Aura Camera 6000 which utilises electromagnetic field imaging equipment, Mitchell’s goal was to capture a portrait for one of each occupation listed. This project focuses on the 5 w’s on the topic of work such as who works? What do people work as? When do people work? Where do people work? Why do people work? and how do people work? From my personal perspective, the answers to these questions can be found in All Auras Touch which displays a variety of people, all different ages, genders and most importantly auras. From Mitchell’s lecture, I have understood auras to be the different colours people transmit which represent different energies. These energies which are projected are captured with the aura camera. When viewing these images, I see the connections between body and mind between the artist and the sitter and between the sitter and their aura.

"All Auras Touch is a snapshot of contemporary Australia..." (Mitchell 2020)

Kate Mitchell, All Auras Touch, 2020 Carriageworks, Sydney, Australia

As there are 1,023 portraits of workers being captured in this exhibition Mitchell articulates that different jobs have brought out different ways she would approach the person stating when it was a judge’s or policeman’s turn an unstoppable feeling of fear or “nervousness” would take part (Mitchell 2021). Furthermore, With the vast amount of workers being photographed connections, there are highly apparent connections. By grouping the images with similar auras, Mitchell’s work is exhibited as a typology. This is similar to the works of August Sander in People of the Twentieth Century (1927) where Sander captured people of different work and social classes in 1920 Germany, grouping them in typologies of seven categories.

Moreover, the categorisation of people with similar auras, in All Auras Touch represents an interconnectedness that is shared amongst them and disregards the differences in the careers of these people.

References:

Schauplatz für Fotografie, W. (2018, April 18). AUGUST SANDER. PORTRAIT OF A SOCIETY. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MJZPFmulK8

Mitchell, K. (2020). All Auras Touch [Photography Exhibition]. Carriageworks, Sydney, Australia https://www.katemitchellartist.com/#/all-auras-touch-2020/

Mitchell, K. (2021). Kate Mitchell Lecture [80067 Photography Guest Lecture Program]. UTS Canvas. https://canvas.uts.edu.au/

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Monday March 25th 2013 – PSM Lecture Series – Kate Mitchell

A question is beginning to form as week by week we get to know these Australian artists, are they sincere or are they taking the piss? I find it ironic that the one artist blatantly choosing to address humor in her work somehow exudes the most sincerity. Kate possesses a charisma that ropes you in immediately. Standing in front of us, looking every part of the beautiful young artist, she proceeds to fumble through a lecture cursed by powerpoint induced struggles and random one–liners. She is occasionally egged-on by long time friend Todd McMillan, with whom she shares a slightly self-deprecating sense of humor.

  (Kate Mitchell 2012)

Kate is a performance-based artist that explores what she refers to as the cartoon impossible, think Looney Toons or Buster Keaton, both of which are listed by Mitchell as sources of inspiration. However Kate’s practice isn’t all about fun and games, she is often addressing ideas of work and work ethic, and labour for her art she does. In her 2012 work, Get into it, Kate uses two plungers to climb up a façade she’d constructed herself, and climb into an open window. She not only labors, she quite frankly endangers herself for her practice. She speaks about the fact that in these cartoons, no one ever gets hurt, but when she reenacts these scenarios, it’s real. She’s trying to achieve an ‘aliveness’ through these works, a reminder that we’re living in the present.

(Kate Mitchell 2010)

One work I’d have loved to see in situ for myself is Being Punctual, where she leapt onto a chandelier and swung back and forth until dismounting. I found particularly interesting the differences she mentioned between the behavior and demographic of her audiences when the piece was showed in Paris compared to in Australia. In one case, elderly Parisians gathered on the street with their wine to regard the work, while in her homeland of Australia, it was met with sports fan like cheers of encouragement. Regardless of the response, it looks like fun! I think what resonated with me personally was Mitchell's candor, I always wanted to swing from a chandelier, so I did. “This is my work and this is what I do.”

Image References:

Mitchell, 2012, Get Into It, Chalk Horse, viewed on March 26, 2013,

<http://www.chalkhorse.com.au/artists.php?a=MITCHELL&s=1&i=3>

  Mitchell, 2010, Being Punctual, Chalk Horse, viewed on March 26, 2013,