Kate Rohde, the Australian artist known for her lushly ornamental and unabashedly surreal sculptural practice, has carved out a unique space in the contemporary art world by reimagining natural history through the lens of fantasy. Though she is best known for her vividly colored resin sculptures and baroque dioramas, one of the most striking and conceptually layered aspects of her work is her beaded taxidermy—a body of art that pushes the boundaries of both materiality and meaning. In these fantastical creations, Rohde turns the once-scientific practice of taxidermy into a sparkling pageant of excess, critique, and wonder, rendered in a meticulous mosaic of beads.
Rohde’s beaded taxidermy is not a literal reconstruction of animals but a flamboyant reinterpretation of them. Drawing from the traditions of 18th and 19th-century natural history displays, she creates elaborate, otherworldly versions of birds, mammals, and hybrid creatures that are entirely artificial, composed of sculpted foam, resin, fabric, and most distinctively, intricate beading. Each piece glistens with thousands of glass and plastic beads arranged in psychedelic color palettes—acid greens, ultraviolet purples, saturated pinks and oranges—that intentionally defy the naturalistic tones of actual animal specimens. In doing so, she subverts the expectations of taxidermy as a science of preservation and instead proposes it as a theater of imagination.
The process begins with sculptural modeling. Rohde often creates a base form using materials such as carved polystyrene or molded resin, sometimes referencing actual animal skeletons or silhouettes but exaggerating proportions and details to create a sense of theatricality. Over these forms, she applies layers of decorative surface, using adhesive and painstaking stitching techniques to encrust the animals in beads, sequins, glitter, and faux gemstones. Feathers and fabric often enhance the beaded texture, adding additional layers of tactility and opulence. The final effect is one of riotous, gleaming vitality—a creature that never lived, yet seems to pulse with strange energy.
A particularly arresting example of her beaded taxidermy is a series of bird-like forms, reminiscent of peacocks, lyrebirds, and phoenixes, with tail feathers made from cascading beaded strands and baroque plumes. The heads of these creations are often exaggerated with jewel-like eyes and curled crests, the beading applied in fractal-like patterns that suggest not only feathers but jewels and scales. One such piece featured a long-necked avian hybrid with wings extended in flight, its surface beaded in a gradient that moved from coral to turquoise to gold, mimicking tropical plumage while fully embracing the artificiality of its form.
Rohde’s aesthetic draws heavily on the decorative arts, particularly the Rococo and Baroque periods, and she has often spoken about her interest in excess as a form of resistance against minimalist taste and masculine-coded seriousness in the art world. Her beaded taxidermy pieces, in particular, are a vibrant feminist response to the traditional museum diorama, which historically framed animals as specimens and objects of knowledge, collected, categorized, and often exotified within colonial frameworks. By reclaiming these forms in bright synthetic colors and layering them with decorative abundance, Rohde reclaims agency—not for the animals themselves, which remain entirely fictional—but for a way of seeing that privileges fantasy, pleasure, and complexity.
The use of beads in this context is both practical and symbolic. On a technical level, beads offer durability and texture, allowing Rohde to manipulate light and shadow across curved surfaces. The reflective quality of glass and plastic beads adds a kind of visual electricity to her sculptures, making them seem alive under gallery lighting. But more than this, beads serve as a language of ornament, historically dismissed in Western art criticism as feminine, frivolous, or non-essential. Rohde weaponizes this perception, embracing the decorative as a mode of critical rebellion and amplifying it to overwhelming levels.
Her beaded taxidermy has been featured in major exhibitions across Australia and internationally, often situated within larger installations that evoke faux-museums, synthetic jungles, or dreamlike cabinets of curiosity. Within these contexts, her creatures become both spectacle and satire—mocking the colonial gaze even as they seduce it. Viewers are drawn in by their vibrant appeal, only to discover layers of irony and critique beneath the surface. These sculptures question not only what is natural but what is valuable, what is beautiful, and who gets to define those terms.
Rohde’s work challenges the boundaries between fine art, craft, and design. Her use of beading connects to traditions found in indigenous adornment, couture embroidery, and domestic needlework, yet she applies it to subjects usually reserved for high-concept sculptural inquiry. In this fusion of material and subject, her taxidermy transcends its ironic framework and becomes a celebration of imagination and absurdity as legitimate and powerful artistic forces.
In the world of Kate Rohde’s beaded taxidermy, no animal is bound by biology, and no surface is left unembellished. Every glimmering bead contributes to a larger narrative—one that honors artifice over authenticity, play over pedantry, and exuberance over restraint. Her creatures may not have lived in the forests or skies, but they live vividly in the space between wonder and critique, demanding to be seen not as curiosities, but as icons of a new, bejeweled mythology.