DrKate Hunter

I am an interdisciplinary artist and scholar working across performance, improvisation, painting, and sound. My research employs innovative use of found objects, polyphonics and verbatim recordings to examine the complex interplay between hearing, listening, reading and speaking that is implicit in the ways humans communicate through language.

My performance works have been critically and popularly acclaimed, and are characterized by a very specific, writerly approach to crafting my collected texts, audio scripts, vocal utterings and snippets, which are layered, repeated and extruded to create an highly distinctive theatrical form. I have made work in Australia, New York and Venice and my projects been funded by local, regional, state and national funders. Projects include Memorandum (Theatre Works, 2014) The Waiting Room (with Born In A Taxi, 2010-2015) and Earshot (2017-2019), More recent works juxtapose technologies, storytelling and the live body with installation, sound and cardboard cutouts, and include Sky Symphony (with Rea Dennis) at La Mama HQ 2023, Sea Symphony (with Rea Dennis and Rawcus Theatre) at Theatre Works 2024, and Near Sighted at fortyfivedownstairs in 2023. In 2024 I was selected for the Public Art Commission's 'Venetian Bind' project and travelled to Venice with a team of interdisciplinary artists to make a site-responsive work as part of the Venice Biennale. I received a Vice Chancellor’s Postgraduate Research Award from Victoria University, am a Research Fellow at Deakin Motion Lab, and a Fellow of the HE Academy.

I review performance and interdisciplinary work regularly for The Conversation, and I was Australian writer-in-residence at Chamber Made’s 2022 Hi-Viz Practice Exchange. I worked as associate artist with award-winning physical theatre company Born in a Taxi for 15 years, and have trained extensively in the Suzuki Method of Actor Training, Viewpoints and Composition. I have studied in New York with Anne Bogart and SITI Company, the UK with Ruth Kanner and Andrew Morrish, and with acclaimed theatre director Richard Schechner. I am currently Senior Lecturer in Art and Performance at Deakin University.