The National College
of Art & Design
The National College
of Art & Design
Research
Kristina Huxley has been working as a visual artist since 1995. Her practice covers a broad range of activities and media with a commitment to research and innovation. She has been the recipient of several major awards and residencies. She has also worked on several commissioning selection panels and has been a member of the programming board at The Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery. Kristina Huxley currently is lecturing full time in the Department of Core Studies at The National College of Art and Design, Dublin.
Kristina completed her MA (Painting) at NCAD in 1999 funded by a Research Scholarship awarded by The Leverhulme Trust (UK). Prior to this she was awarded a Research Grant by the Norwegian Government Research Council (KAS) and worked in Bergen as a guest student at Kunsthogskole (formerly Vestlandets Kustakademiet). Kristina completed her BFA at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University (Pembroke College) in 1995. She has completed residencies at The Fire Station Artists' Studios, Dublin and the Artists' Work Programme at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. In addition to lecturing at NCAD she has lectured at other Art and Design institutions in Ireland and the UK including; Limerick School of Art and Design; Galway and Mayo Institute of Technology; Sligo Institute of Technology and The Isle of Man College. Currently she lives and works from her studio in East Galway.
Kristina has exhibited nationally and internationally; her work is held in both national and international collections. Embedded within her contribution to contemporary art practice she is committed to working on experimental projects and research both inside and outside of institutional structures. As a consequence, her research interests inherently value the nature of innovation, experimentation, risk taking, intervention, creative proposition and exploration of the boundaries between agencies and context.
Kristina Huxley's practice investigates the phenomenon of change, its invisible identity and visible and physical potential. Her paintings, objects and installations present changing realities and happenings engaging visual dialogue between perception and our physical relationship with space and the environment. Activated, the public and context are vital agents.
As a hybrid of research activities Huxley's practice operates with scientific like methodology, committed to the systematic analysis of the margin between science and art. Her research interests concerning environmental issues, ecology, and entomology are integrated into studio practice. She hijacks the sensing of phenomenological experiences through a continuous exchange between material and image, material metamorphosis and environments, often collaborating with agencies and specialists working outside the area of creative practice.
During the 90's, Huxley's work, such as 'mushroom series', 'orange series' and ' condensation series', used various methods turning invisible processes into visible matter; ephemeral materials were used to function as catalogues of process and change. Elusive to measure condensation, heat, moisture and other unstable materials were utilized to present continuously evolving processes and constant transience creating dialogue with time, about time and the present. The work functioned as observatory, framing and enhancing our perception of natural phenomena, happenings and the mysteriousness of the world around us. Simultaneously, defining other physical variables, Huxley began an ongoing process of listening and collecting stories of UFOs, freak wave and ghost sightings and documenting 'in between' places such as wastelands, borders and coasts.
For Huxley, painting and image making enable a terrain where visibility and invisibility are inseparable. Questioning the limitations of the still image she has, in recent years, developed paintings that combine industrial heat sensitive materials and colour shifting paint technology creating surfaces in constant motion, that are permanent and permanently changing.
Since 1998, Huxley has developed 'sensitive paintings': a series of paintings which are heat sensitive, produced on canvas using a heat sensitive paint. Their surfaces change over a period of time, producing multiple images for which the outcome is affected by the environment in which they are located. They present a permanent process of transition; a constant cycling of imagery changing from a preceding state into a succeeding one. Beneath the canvases different types of heating systems (electrical radiant, convection and plumbed with micro bore, pump and heater) are hidden, controlled by timers, triggering the dark coloured surfaces to vanish where the heat builds up. When the timers switch off the surfaces return to their original temperature and colour.
More recently, the series of 'restless still, after dust' paintings use destabilising contradictions to underline a sense of restlessness and shifting. Huxley's elusive subject matter dust, whilst being something and nothing at the same time, discusses process and image. The dust sits within an image, suspended in transit and unable to land. However the paintings are not static; they are constructed using industrial automotive colour shift paint technology. The curved iridescent and gloss surfaces shift and change in colour as you move within the context they are sited, with each passing angle delivering a different image. The imperfect image mirroring of the dust and blurred markings makes it difficult for the viewer to focus on any aspect of the surface for a length of time: prompting the viewer to continuously shift their focus back and forth underlining restlessness. The dust paintings present large scale virtual surfaces that that are in constant motion. The outer gloss surface fragments the surface further, activating the viewers' presence, mirroring the environment in which they stand.
Huxley's paintings continue to change before us. They present systems of changing surfaces that render the work, image and experience ever more elusive and unexpected. They unfold a conversation with semblance, perception, process of transition and our physical relationship to the world through the installations and contexts they deliver.
International Plein Air "Mark Rothko 2010"
Kristina has been invited to participate in this year's International Plein Air "Mark Rothko 2010", which is taking place in Daugavpils, Latvia from September 14-25. Kristina will be working on a series of paintings for the Rothko Art Centre Collection and for an exhibition which will celebrate the birthday of Mark Rothko. The International Plein Air is organized by The Department of Culture of Daugavpils City.
Click here to download Kristina Huxley's CV
