Katy Brett
- 3D Arts 2026
Katy Brett's practice examines human relationship to site through the transformation of everyday material.
Melding post-industrial medium with traditional craft, Brett creates a dialogue between past and present material cultures.
Raised in rural Britain at the millennium’s edge, her work emerges from a period of ecological shift—when post-industrial waste began to entangle with natural landscape. This hybrid terrain has become both source and subject in her practice. Adapting pre-industrial making traditions to Anthropocenic systems, Brett employs a range of materials and technologies. Fragments found on sidewalks are reproduced into metal or Foamular®—their warmth and context deliberately estranged through materials that embody the detached nature of industrial manufacturing. Animal bones are configured as lamps and utensils, while digital tools like photogrammetry allow her to “gather” and manipulate ephemeral driftwood shards into furniture-like forms.
Through these varied approaches, Brett creates familiar objects that question our relationship to both craft and mass production. Under the guise of household items, this interactive sculpture invites viewers to reconsider the materials that construct our increasingly globalized environments and the distance between dweller and their environment.
Raised in rural Britain at the millennium’s edge, her work emerges from a period of ecological shift—when post-industrial waste began to entangle with natural landscape. This hybrid terrain has become both source and subject in her practice. Adapting pre-industrial making traditions to Anthropocenic systems, Brett employs a range of materials and technologies. Fragments found on sidewalks are reproduced into metal or Foamular®—their warmth and context deliberately estranged through materials that embody the detached nature of industrial manufacturing. Animal bones are configured as lamps and utensils, while digital tools like photogrammetry allow her to “gather” and manipulate ephemeral driftwood shards into furniture-like forms.
Through these varied approaches, Brett creates familiar objects that question our relationship to both craft and mass production. Under the guise of household items, this interactive sculpture invites viewers to reconsider the materials that construct our increasingly globalized environments and the distance between dweller and their environment.