Kathrin Longhurst's high-realist, figurative painting practice intentionally transforms difficult encounters of oppression and adversity into powerful and positive messages of hope and change. Having grown up in former communist East Germany, Longhurst's family escaped to Sweden when she was 15. The experience of this displacement, compounded by the jarring contrast between living within a totalitarian regime and that of a Western capitalist democracy was the spark that ignited Longhurst's enduring commitment to issues of social justice and freedom of speech. Having travelled extensively throughout Europe and Asia before finally settling in Australia, Longhurst possesses a unique understanding of human rights issues, the role of women and girls in society, as well as a keen awareness of the seductive power of advertising and the media. Her skilfully rendered images of women in states of defiant self-awareness layer themes of sexuality, propaganda and body image stereotypes to deconstruct and reassess the mechanisms at play within a given society. ‘Propaganda is all around us. It’s not specific to a period of time, a country or a regime…it’s everywhere’. This ingrained knowledge of political conditioning overtly operates within much of Longhurst's visual language and is the driving force behind her passion to use art to question, challenge and reinvent the ethics and values of today's contemporary culture.