Katrin Spranger is an environmental artist creating glass and metal sculptures dealing with environmental issues, depletion of resources and dystopian narratives.
Katrin Spranger is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture, performance, sculptural painting, and jewellery, drawing on the stark realities of the environmental crisis. Her practice addresses issues such as plastic pollution, crude oil spills, water scarcity and waste from her production methods using materials that directly reference human impact on the natural world.
Finding beauty in the poetic reflection of man-made destruction of resources her work both seduces and challenges us to tap into our planetary consciousness.
Past innovative techniques involved the development of crude oil into jewellery that melts on the body and the 3D printing of honey into edible art in engaging performances.
A key theme in Katrin’s work is the passive role humans assume within the environment and the reluctance to accept responsibility for its destruction. Waste plastic in her sculptures becomes a contemporary artefact—an embodiment of our indulgent, throwaway culture and excessive consumerism.
For her large-scale 3D paintings, Katrin collects plastic waste to make body sculptures. By combining plastics with taxidermy and animal parts—skulls, feathers, human hair and fur—she creates hybrid creatures that reflect on the emotional and intellectual dislocation from nature. These sculptures are integral to her performances, where they serve not only as narrative elements but also as tools for mark-making on canvas. After the performance, the canvas is taken to the studio for the performed body sculptures to be mounted. Alongside the traces of movements, these become lasting imprints of environmental commentary.
In her Aquatopia series, Katrin used electroforming—a copper-plating process on organic materials—to create metallised sculptures. However, the toxic byproducts of this method led her to critically reassess her own production techniques, inspiring her to explore and reevaluate the waste leftovers to transform and use as creative materials for paintings and sculpture.
Being a passionate educator, Katrin co-founded the K2 Academy of Contemporary Jewellery in London in 2016, where she teaches art and design qualifications.
