Transforming Bodies

Erin Coates’ current body of work merges familial narratives with animal encounters from childhood. It draws from a recent residency where she explored specimens in storage within the Western Australian Museum to consider the role of animals and faunal remnants as anchors for personal histories.

In The End & The Beginning, a snake entwines around five cast bronze bones, each depicting an incident within her family across three generations. Exploring both human and ecological fragilities, the work references Erin and her siblings’ encounters with tiger snakes, which lived in the now-degraded wetlands near her childhood home. The bones show signs of traumatic breaks, hairline fractures and ossification, as they knit back together. The work coalesces experiences of loss, misadventure, healing and a sense of solastalgia over the lost swamp.

The End & The Beginning, 2025
Bronze & silicone
28 x 68 x 40cm

The Shell Diver, 2025
Silicone & Callistocypraea aurantium cowrie shell
7 x 23 x 10cm

The Shell Diver, 2024
bronze, silicone
6 x 20 x 9 cm

The Shell Diver ll, 2024
bronze, silicone
6 x 17 x 9 cm
The Shell Diver l pictured in right image

Sisters’ Bones, 2024
bronze, silicone, steel
25 x 25 x 12 cm

Lifespan, 2025
Mohair & silicone
100 x 14 x 30cm

Continuing Erin’s focus on human-animal entanglements, Lifespan draws on the form of a rare deepsea sponge found in a storage box in the Museum of the Great Southern. Formed by a lattice of fine white silica fibres, ‘Euplectella aspergillum’ is known for its symbiotic relationship with small shrimp that become entrapped within the sponge once they are fully grown. The hair covering Lifespan suggests the changing colour of hair over a lifetime, specifically of the women in Erin’s family, and acts as a meditation on the changing roles of family members over time and the elements of care, duty and support within a family structure.

The Shell Diver’s Children, 2024
silicone, Venusta cowrie shells from the Zoila Family
9 x 29 x 11 cm

Matrilineal Sponge, 2024
bronze, silicone, mohair
18 x 14 x 45 cm

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Erin Coates presents a new body of sculptures in bronze, silicon, mohair, shell and other media; almost as talismans to her family’s maritime history, the whale bone yard off the coast of Albany and the so-called ghost specimens of extinct species she has researched. Much of her work across film, drawing and objects stems from her interests in marine biology, free-diving and encounters with ecological and human fragilities. ~ from Moore Contemporary, Nature Reserves catalogue, at Sydney Contemporary 2024

This work was creating during an Activating Collections Artist Residency with ART ON THE MOVE in partnership with the WA Museum and the Museum of the Great Southern. It was made on the lands of the Mengang peoples of Kinjarling Albany and the Noongar peoples of Boorloo Perth.