KRISTA BERGA

Transcription

1 KRISTA BERGA

2 Born New Zealand lives and works Brisbane works across sculpture, drawing, text, projection, and installation. Berga examines the elemental forces of sex nd death; her works are powerful evocations nto form of the nature of human beingness and f natural human recourse to formlessness. he works, both physical and psychological and vertly sexual hark to a darker vision of the uman condition. Alison Kubler (2008) In both form and content, Berga s works are acts of transgression and transformation there is something uncannily open about berga s palpable and in fact electrifying work, something frank and disarming, bordering on the unguarded a gesture of self expression and mortal vulnerability, made as if in insistent ager as one risking exposure to the other. avid L. Clark (2007)

3 Krista Berga is extensively privately collected across Australia and internationally. She has exhibited and toured works, across sculpture, text, drawing, and installation, in both public and private galleries and museums across Australia, and privately internationally. She has won and undertaken numerous sculpture, drawing, text, and installation commissions (including portraits of major australian figures: actor and director BARRy KoSKy, vienna in 2001, musician Warren Ellis, paris-melbourne in 2003, and writer and curator WillIAm wright OAM in 2001) In 1999 Berga was finalist in and singled out for both critical and media attention for Portrait of Paul Milliss after SElecTIon for the ArchIBAld PoRTRAIT prize exhibition, AT the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, ouring capital and regional galleries of ustralia to 2000; in 2000 Berga went on to e selected for invitation and then to win the Trustees prize at the invitation only

4 Kedumba National Drawing Award, Sydney, with Portraits of Emma Tom, awarded her by John Olsen OAM; in 2001 BERGA won the public and highly contested commission for Burley KATon Halliday s landmark building Republic in Sydney, produced in collaboration with Sydney City Council and Urban Art Projects, Brisbane, with her monumental 4m2 BRonZE sculpture Un, on permanent public exhibition since 2001 to date, in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Berga went on in 2001 to be curated into Australia s first national touring exhibition of sculpture: Fathoming, with three human scale bronzes My warsaw isn t your Warsaw, touring capital and REGIonal galleries and museums of Australia from , curated by K.A Roberts and Alison Kubler; n 2001 Berga was privately commissioned to ake PoRTRAIT of BARRy KoSKy in vienna and went on to live, work and exhibit in Stockholm, weden, until her return to Sydney in 2003 for er exhibition of new sculpture and works on aper (again produced in collaboration with

5 UAP) It s a wonderful life, curated by Dominic aunsell and opened by Davina Jackson. In 2004 Berga was curated into the first survey of Queensland sculptors: TempERATuRE, AT the Museum o fbbrisbane, curated by Frank Mcbride nd essayed ( On Krista Berga ) by David Burnett, curator of International art at Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, and opened by Anna Bligh. In she went on to produce the over 1000 pages of text works that would form the bodies of works Vacant PoSSESSIon, The Vegan, Milky Way, Murder me, The future s finished, You lie til your head is a stone, and I am the coffin that will not be silent to BE shown in installation or in exhibition across ustralia 2006 to date. In she was selected for invitation and won the again highly-contested invitation-only sculpture commission for PrivATE harbour GARden, Sydney Harbour, with her 2.5m2 BRonZE monument The enemy of snow, produced in collaboration with UAP; in 2006 she was commissioned

6 by and exhibited at the Brisbane Writers Festival, BRISBAne PowERhouSE, with her first transgressive 4mx3m projected 125-pAGE TExt installation; in both 2006 and 2007 BERGA went on to be selected for exhibition of large scale text projections Vacant PoSSESSIon and The future s finished AT the national Young writers Festivals, and in 2008 four TExt works SElecTEd for publication in the Festival s landmark book of young writing, Herding KITES, launched both nationally and internationally; in 2008 she went on to receive the commission for the book for STAnford UnivERSITy press and Brown University s Anonymous life: RomanTIcISm and dispossession by Jacques Khalip, launched in both the USA and in Europe at symposia and distributed internationally by S.U.P, with her text work Push ASIde the I that I was. In Berga was both selected for exhibtion and ommissioned for the public program (at its key site in King GeoRGE SquARE AT BRISBAne Town Hall) by the national Arc Biennale curated by

7 Tony Stephens with text works Murder me and the monumental text installation Milky way (on public exhibition in King George Square until its ultimate deterioration). And in 2008 Berga was both selected for the national exhibition, and singled out for critical attention, with her text work I am the coffin that will not BE SIlent in Neo-Goth AT the UnivERSITy of QuEEnsland ART Museum, curated by Alison Kubler; the work was reselected in 2009 to be shown in regional Queensland with two other monumental text on paper works The vegan and milky Way in the survey show of AuSTRAlIAn ARTISTS working in and on Paper, curated by Samantha Creyton; in Berga was commissioned by curator Tony Stephens and the STATE Library of Queensland to make and undertake 500 page interactive and interrogative text projection I ME you WE THEM for RESIdency at the State Library Jan-Mar In erga was curated into the controversial Art of the nude, curated by Kevin Wilson from

8 the collection of Alex Mackay: Berga was epresented with two human scale bronzes rom the series It s a wonderful life and One day I will strike birds from the sky, and portrait of a nose Cold TEETh, shown alongside George Baldessin and Bill Henson. In 2010 she worked solely to produce two new bodies of text work on paper, Mind will come and For my other; For my other IS now on exhibition (16 Feb-23 Mar 2011) at Jan Manton Art as part of a curation of Berga s works on paper, in aint, and four works in bronze (A Dream of ife) alongside works in paint by Judith Wright nd Daniel Mafe in the exhibition Drawn to abstraction curated by manton. Full CV and list of exhibitions available on request