3rd Jul – 17th Jan 2021
Simpson Gallery
Still in Love with the World is a call to arms, exploring the artist’s “concern about the incessant misuse and skewed distribution of power in the world, our compromised environment, and the resulting anxiety many of us share about the future.”
Berg ponders, “how do we remain Still in Love with the World when we are up against seemingly insurmountable human and environmental trouble? How can we activate ourselves and ensure resilience?”
The exhibition explores rituals and gestures of self–preservation and reinvention as a means of reconnecting to the physical world and as a form of human solidarity and resistance.
Berg has collected abandoned materials from city streets and bushland that society has deemed no longer valuable, and by exerting her will onto these materials (clothing, fire ash, glass, bark, tree limbs, fence palings, furniture), she frees them of their former selves and allows new forces to manifest. “It is through the action of re invention that neglected and forgotten materials are reimagined into the world as objects of transformation and empowerment.”
Kirstin Berg creates immersive environments by combining and manipulating unconventional materials such as fire ash, clothing, bush debris and hard rubbish into epic wall works and sculptural ephemera. Her work fuses painting, drawing and sculpture and revolves around her concern for environmental and human crisis and the redemption found in transforming our losses.
For the past four years Kirstin has facilitated trauma informed art classes for young people held in youth custody. This work has greatly influenced her practice and consolidated her belief in art as a powerful tool for educational, social and cultural repair.
Kirstin has exhibited extensively in Australia and has lived, worked and exhibited internationally in Prague, Berlin and Barcelona. Her work is held in significant collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank, and Parliament House Canberra. She is also represented in a number of private collections within Australia, Europe and America.
She currently lives and works between Melbourne and Berlin.
