The Barge and the Bear Christina Read

Auckland based artist Christina Read uses the play between text and objects to portray a certain melancholy in her mixed media installation The Barge and the Bear, reflecting on the idea that life is absurd in a purposeless chaotic universe. Naïve yet poetic sculptures teamed with photographs and text, let the viewer search for something logical in a collection of things which have been left behind in an experiment but it will be unclear of what kind. Read describes The Barge and the Bear with this quote by Rebecca Solnit: “It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals.”

Christina Read graduated with a Master of Fine Art from Elam in 2007.

Presented alongside Kate Woods Trouble Everyday