Krista Berga
Krista Berga
Australia
About Krista Berga
Born New Zealand 1970-lives and works Australia-works across sculpture, drawing, painting, text and installation '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' salut without return' as Derrida puts it-a gesture of self expression and mortal vulnerability, made as if in insistent wager... as one risking exposure to the other'-DAVID L. CLARK 'Berga examines the elemental forces of sex and death.... Her works are powerful evocations into form of the nature of human beingness and of natural human recourse to formlessness'-ALISON KUBLER Berga is extensively privately collected and curated across Australia and around the world. She has exhibited in both public and private galleries/fora and museums across Australia; She has won and undertaken numerous sculpture, drawing, text, and installation commissions (including portraits of major Australian figures including 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 selected for and finalist in-singled out for both critical and media attention-the Archibald Portrait Prize exhibition at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (with Portrait of Paul Milliss, exhibition touring capital and regional galleries of Australia to 2000); in 2000 Berga went on to be selected for the invitation-only and then to win the Trustees' prize at the Kedumba National Drawing Award, Sydney, with Portraits of Emma Tom (awarded 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 (with her monumental 4sqm bronze sculpture 'Un', on permanent public exhibtion since 2001 to date). Berga went on in 2001 to be curated into Australia's first national touring exhibItion of sculpture: 'Fathoming', with a series of 3 human scale bronzes 'My Warsaw isn't your Warsaw', touring capital and regional galleries and museums of Australia from 2002-2004, curated by K.A Roberts and Alison Kubler; in 2001 Berga was privately commissioned to make Portrait of Barry Kosky in Vienna and went on to live, work and exhibit in Stockholm, Sweden, until her return to Sydney in 2003 for her solo exhibition of new sculpture and works on paper (again produced in collaboration with UAP) 'It's a wonderful life', opened by Davina Jackson. In 2004 Berga was curated into the first survey of Queensland sculptors: 'Temperature', at the Museum of Brisbane, curated by Frank McBride and essayed ("˜On Krista Berga') by David Burnett, curator of International Art at Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, and opened by Anna Bligh. In 2004-2005 she went on to produce the over 1000 pages of text works that would form the bodies of the 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', all to be shown in installation or in exhibition across Australia from 2006 to date. In 2005-2006 she was selected for invitation and won the highly-contested invitation-only sculpture commission for 'Private Harbour Garden', Sydney Harbour, with her 2.5sqm bronze monument 'The enemy of snow', produced in collaboration with UAP. in 2006 she was commissioned by and exhibited at the Brisbane Writers' Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse, with her first "˜transgressive' 4mx3m projected 125-page text installation 'Vacant Possession'. In both 2006 and 2007 Berga went on to be selected for exhibition of the large scale text projections 'Vacant Possession' and 'The future's finished' at the National Young Writers' Festivals, and in 2008 had 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 international attention after her selection with the text work 'Push aside the I that I was') for the cover of Stanford University Press and Brown University's "˜Anonymous life: Romanticism and Dispossession' by Professor Jacques Khalip, launched in both the USA and in Europe at symposia/fora and distributed internationally by SUP. In 2007-2008 Berga was both selected for exhibtion and commissioned for its public program by the ARC Biennale ('Murder Me' and the monumental installation 'Milky Way', on public exhibtion in King George Square until its ultimate deteriotation, curated by Tony Stephens). And in 2008 Berga was both selected for the national exhibition, and again singled out for critical attention, with 'I Am The Coffin That Will Not Be Silent' in Neo-Goth at the University of Queensl
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