Artist: Kristin McIver
Dates of residency: Fall 2015
Born: Australia
Hometown: Melbourne
Lives and works: Brooklyn, New York
URL: http://www.kristinmciver.com
Education: Master of Visual Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts (2009), The University of Melbourne
BIO/ STATEMENT:
Kristin McIver is an Australian artist whose practice includes sculpture, painting and installation. Utilising devices such as text, neon, and mixed media, McIver’s works explores the theme of identity in consumer societies and participatory culture. Her recent works examines personal identity and its relationship to social media, and how participants in digital consumer culture become both the subject and object of the production cycle. McIver proposes that ideologies served to consumers through traditional and social media, empowered by advancing technologies and driven by market forces, become referents for new models of self-representation.
Whilst at the studio residency at AAI, Kristin will continue working on a collaborative project with RU. The Selfie Project explores the complexity of online identity and surveillance, translating personal Facial Recognition Data generated via social media networks, into sound and painted representations. The Selfie Project is designed as a participatory art project to be distributed to schools through an educational program, at an age when social media use becomes prevalent. Students will download their auto-generated Face Recognition Data from Facebook and transcode it into paintings and sound compositions.
McIver’s work on The Selfie Project will coincide with the research and development of a large scale Data Portrait using indigenous botanicals of the California desert where the installation will be sited. The Data Portrait is a land art installation which also transcodes Face Recognition Data into a living, abstract ‘portrait’. Viewers will be able to walk through the work and eventually view it back in the digital realm on Google Earth.
Kristin received her Master of Fine Arts (Visual Arts), at the University of Melbourne (VCA & MCM), and has just completed her thesis You and Me: Models of Representation in Participatory Culture under the supervision of Dr Stephen Haley.
McIver participated in the Vancouver Biennale’ artist-in residence program in 2015, during which time she created a site specific public artwork for Vancouver Biennale in the City of Squamish, BC. Her work Sitting Piece was recently acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria (2013), and All that is solid melts into air was acquired by Latrobe University Museum of Art (2014). A Questionable Choice was selected as the winner of the Melbourne Sculpture Prize (2012). McIver’s work has been selected as finalist in a number of awards and residencies.
Kristin McIver is represented by Royale Projects (USA), James Makin Gallery (Victoria, Australia) and Liverpool Street Gallery (Sydney, Australia). Her work is held in public and private collections in Victoria, New South Wales, Perth, Singapore, North America, Carribean, Europe, and the UK.
GALLERIES: Royale Projects (USA); James Makin Gallery (Melbourne); Liverpool Street Gallery (Sydney
SELECT PERMANENT COLLECTION: National Gallery of Victoria
