Brisbane-based sculptor Stephen Hart has created a 4m scale ‘model’ of a WW2 Catalina flying boat, the core of an exhibition of drawings and sculptural works titled The Cat Came Back (September 2025).

The construction of the Catalina, at one-eighth scale of the original, has not been an easy task. It has required Stephen to test his ideas – writing, drawing, photographing and calculating – with the first drawing dated 15 January 2024. He has researched flight, mathematics, and engineering beyond where he believed he was capable. In many ways, this project has been coming for Stephen since he was a boy; with the skills to realise it developed throughout fifty years of art practice.

Crafting the Catalina has taken Stephen into the unknown, with the artist regularly doubting his ability to complete the task – until recently. The Catalina has absorbed 13,000 rivets, timber, aluminium, and materials with which he has never worked before – including surfboard foam and rubber.

The project has stimulated this book, with a new major poem from Nathan Shepherdson, a foreword by Adrian Hall, and text by Louise Martin-Chew.

ISBN: 978-1-7641424-4-1

Published September 2025.