Caitlin Devoy (b.1976), is a contemporary Aotearoa (New Zealand) artist. Born in London, she grew up in Omārōrō (Newtown), Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington), where she lives and works.

Her work combines humour (engaging its history as a strategy of disruption) with the erotic and explosive politics of the body. Laughter and parody are pitted against sexist and binary attitudes to gender, bodies, and value in art making. Her sculptures employ the tactile, seductive, and kinaesthetic potency of materials, harnessing their potential to engage the viewer in an embodied, rather than predominantly visual, experience. The temptation or provocation for viewers to touch the objects, playfully challenges the customary relationship between viewer and artwork. She employs our tactile familiarity with everyday objects, and their usual uses or functions, for pointedly humorous means.

“Caitlin Devoy’s work is simultaneously seductive and unnerving, sensual and neutered, excoriating and tender. Devoy’s practice embraces the transgressive power of the comedic as both honey and sting, revealing the power relations encoded in representations of the body. The sculptures subvert everyday objects whose specific functions and tactile associations are familiar to the viewer. Her material choices underscore the humour, imbuing the objects with bodily characteristics and undermining binary representations of masculinity and femininity.” Text (collaboration with Hera Lindsay Bird) for Personal Structures.