Sach Catts

Sach Catts’s practice borrows methodologies and epistemologies from a range of disciplines. He has drawn upon practices from street BMX, bicycle maintenance, the construction industry, bodybuilding and fitness training. Much of this work has been performance-based and involves duration, endurance and sweat. Considerations of ‘work’ are an ongoing preoccupation. More recently his work has come to explore the design parameters of contemporary torture practices through an ongoing sculptural series of ‘waterboards’ – torture apparatuses rendered through modernist and contemporary design idioms.

Chop Dig Chanty is a performance work that seeks to compose a chanty (work song) through the labour of chopping and digging. Over the course of three days Catts and Shorter will fell and chop up a tree, and dig a hole respectively. As the axe chips the wood and the shovel carves the soil, rhythms between the two actions will be found and employed to divide and organise the timber and to propel the excavation downward. Performance throughout the day