CHACO KATO

‘Sustainability’ for a contemporary artist usually touches on how well they can sustain their artistic career given the fact that art practice-generated incomes for the large majority of visual artists in Australia sit well below the poverty line. For Melbourne-based artist Chaco Kato, the concept of sustainability lies at the core of her practice which over the past decade has sought to challenge traditional modes of art-making and reception with determinedly ‘greener’, ‘slower’ alternatives. ‘Slow art’ is indeed Kato’s own term of description for her practice. In a paper delivered at a forum accompanying the recent Embodied Energy exhibition in Melbourne,1 Kato outlines five key components of Slow Art, and defers to the words of Guttorm Floistad, a leading philosopher of the so-called Slow Movement: ‘In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection and togetherness. There, we will find real renewal.’ 

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