ABOUT THE ARTIST

Erin Coates is an important mid-career Western Australian artist. She holds a Master of Fine
Arts from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her solo shows include
Pananthem (Spectrum Project Space, Perth, 2007), Surface Tension (Red Gate Gallery 4 Bei
Gao, Beijing, 2010), Kinesphere (Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth, 2014), Driving
to the Ends of the Earth (Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art, 2017) and Alluvial Gold
(Goolugatup Heathcote Cultural Precinct, Perth, 2020). Her work has been featured in major
group shows such as Flux: Survey of Contemporary Art in Western Australia (Lawrence
Wilson Art Gallery, Perth, 2003), Beograd Nekai dSad [Belgrade in the Past and Present]
(Prodajna Galerija, Belgrade, 2007), Suspension (Parer Place Urban Screens QUT, Brisbane,
2012), NYC Independent Film Festival (New York, 2014), High Tide: Fremantle Biennale (sitespecific screening, City of Fremantle 2016), The National: New Australian Art (Museum of
Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2017), Videobrasil – 21st Contemporary Art Biennial | Imagined
Communities (Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2019), Cleveland International Film Festival (Cleveland,
2020) and the Adelaide Biennial: Monster Theatres (Art Gallery of South Australia, 2020).
Her work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Wesfarmers Collection,
Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art, City of Perth Collection, City of Melville Collection,
National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, and the City of Joondalup Collection.

Coates has been consistently and uniquely making high quality video and installation works
around the thematics of body horror and the performance of body control. Her body horror
works are artistic rethinking of genre film as she extends moments of tension and examines
the cultural factors around the spilling, uncontained and violated body. In distinction, her
body control works are displays of containment and precision, of overcoming the natural
and the built world through the practice of climbing. This work The pact, 2017, brings these
threads together in a very clear and successful manner as the two climbers (one of which is
Coates herself) negotiate a deep precipice via a complicated series of technical climbing
manoeuvres and trusting teamwork. It is part horror film, part physical demonstration.