The forensic side of the home.

Collage: a woman in a pink dress sits on a draped green table, her head replaced by a faceted green and blue gemstone, against a pale photograph of glassware and long shadows.

Collage . Installation . Painting . Writing

From Household Work. Collage. 2021

House dust suspended in water — pale fibres, a single orange thread, and a nail trailing downward through the black.

From the dust works. House dust collected from donors, suspended in water. 2018.

Photograph, exhibited at monumental scale.

Catherine Russ seated on a bench in a gallery, chin resting on her hand, framed black-and-white works on the wall behind her.

Catherine Russ in ‘Looking out at the View’. 2020.

About

Catherine Russ is an artist and writer based in Christchurch. Her work treats the home as a site of evidence: dust, laundry, the residue of repeated labour, and the memory such things hold without being asked to.

About the artist . Workshops . Get in touch

Painting: a figure in a black top and a patterned orange and green skirt stands with hands on hips in a deep red bedroom, with a bed, lamp and mirror behind.

From Interiors. My Bedroom. Painting. 2025

Writing

Dog Days — published in Strong Words 4, the best of the Landfall Essay Competition, edited by Lynley Edmeades. The book includes an original collage. Available from Otago University Press.

A strange dog that I recognise as a German Shepherd zigzags up our driveway with what appears to be a sense of urgency. It lopes through our open front door, hugging the entranceway wall until it reaches the dining room, where it discovers our sleeping dog.

From 'Dog Days'

Last One Standing — Micro-fiction published in Flash Frontier.