Kristin McIver

Kristin McIver is an Australian artist based in Brooklyn NY, whose practice includes sculpture, painting and installation. Utilizing materials such as neon, acrylic, McIver’s works explore the themes of desire and aspiration prevalent in our hyper-consumer culture. Through her work, the artist aims to break down the illusions of commodity aesthetics. Borrowing advertising’s very tools of seduction – emotive language, light, and hyper-gloss materials – her artworks mimic the seductive promotions of commoditised ideals before exposing the impact of perpetual consumer cycle on our culture and environment. By subverting the very notion of desire, McIver’s works expose the false realities imposed by urban indoctrination.

Since completing her Master of Visual Art at Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne 2009, McIver’s work has been selected as finalist in a number of awards and residencies, including the Melbourne Sculpture Prize, Montalto Sculpture Prize, Substation Contemporary Art Prize, and 3rd Ward’s Summer Open Call in New York. In 2012, McIver’s work A Questionable Choice was selected as the winner of the inaugural Melbourne Sculpture Prize 2012. In 2013, her work Sitting Piece was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria.

Whilst at the studio residency at AAI, Kristin will be working on a collaborative project with Residency Unlimited. The Selfie Project explores the complexity of online identity and surveillance, translating personal Facial Recognition Data generated via social media networks, into a living, vertical garden. The Selfie Project is designed as a participatory art project to be distributed to schools through a middle school educational program, at an age when social media use becomes prevalent. Students will download their auto-generated Facial Recognition Data from Facebook and transcode it into an aggregated vertical garden of “self portraits” in flowers.

Kristin McIver is represented by Royale Projects (USA), James Makin Gallery (Victoria, Australia) and Liverpool Street Gallery (Sydney, Australia). Her work is held in private collections in Victoria, New South Wales, Perth, Singapore and the UK.

www.kristinmciver.com