Monumental Declaration
November 2012
Despite its proximity to the central business district and many architectural treasures, city-fringe North Melbourne has been the awkward step-sister to the fashionable neighbouring suburbs of the inner north. However, it seems that the word is out. It is now home to a growing number of hipster cafes, bespoke furniture makers and wine bars, adding still more texture to this gritty inner urban pocket. So it should not be entirely surprising that the suburb is also home to a commercial art gallery which appears to be straight from the lower east side of New York.
Gallerysmith has eschewed the familiar art strips in Flinders Lane, Richmond and Collingwood. Housed in a non-descript 1940s warehouse, it is a revelation. Huge steel-framed windows at the rear of the space illuminate a vast chamber with three spacious white-walled galleries.
On the day of my visit, they featured a series of installations by Dadang Christanto, one of Indonesia’s most important artists, and smaller ink works by emerging artist Lucas Grogan who has courted immense controversy in his short career. I don’t much care for the controversy; his works are exciting and visceral. I wanted to take one home.
But I digress. My purpose was to preview the work of Melbourne artist Kirstin Berg, whose new exhibition, MONUMENT, opens at Gallerysmith in November. I had a studio preview of the works.
Berg’s works are intense. It is immediately apparent that they are made from the artist’s dying necessity rather than wanton desire. Central to her practice is the need to establish order from chaos; to make sense of a world where every landscape, whether social, political or emotional, rests on shaky ground.
For as long as artists have been making art, this need has been present. In 1937, Picasso painted one of the seminal works of the 20th century, the monumental painting Guernica. While plainly an anti-war protest, Picasso’s underlying motivation was his need to extract sense from the senseless slaughter of innocents and, arguably, innocence.
The same motivation drives Berg. Though her works are often described as psychological landscapes, they could perhaps be more easily understood as process paintings, where the process rather than the concept imparts the narrative. When considered in this way, Berg’s works are powerfully expressive. They are also remarkably resolute.
Beginning with oversized sheets of soft cotton paper, Berg applies pigment, ink, loose charcoal and sometimes ash to the surface with broad gestural strokes. Once dry, the painted paper is torn into strips and shards, one after the other, reducing the sheets to a series of random fragments. In a very physical way, the violent act of tearing down then gives way to reconstruction. Using the shards as her palette (muted reds and ethereal blue-greys feature prominently), Berg gathers them into a random configuration, shifting and layering pieces across her canvas. This process of arranging, ordering and layering continues until she arrives, often serendipitously, at a desired composition. Here, colours merge and gradate in symbiotic synthesis, providing a playful counterpoint to the random nature of the assembly.
The finished works are a kind of bas-relief assemblage of paper and pins; heroic gestures of strength, splendour and triumph. Yet the potency of each composition masks an undercurrent of vulnerability. Each piece of paper is torn in a way which exposes its fragility. The fibres of the paper are laid bare along the edges of each tear, exposing the heart of the materials and, within, an existential struggle for equilibrium. The effect is an intoxicating blend of tension and resolve.
Kirstin Berg’s MONUMENT shows at Gallerysmith, 170-174 Abbotsford St, North Melbourne from November 16 to December 8.
Image: Kirstin Berg, The Distance Between Us, 2012, watercolour, ink, ash, graphite and steel pins on Arches paper, 160x240x6cm.
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