LOCATION: Sydney, Australia

EMAIL: annawkristensen{ @ }gmail.com

BIO: Anna Kristensen is a painter interested in the power of images to conjure other worlds. In her work she depicts suggestive and enigmatic spaces such as the timeworn interiors of caves, the monumental exteriors of pyramids and passages such as tunnels, staircases and corridors. In the spirit of exploration, her work draws on the imaginative and transformative potential of the Australian landscape and the various mythologies surrounding it.

Most recently she has expanded these interests in a three dimensional installation, Indian Chamber, 2011, a 360-degree panoramic painting depicting the interior of a Jenolan cave. The structure shifts the traditional viewing experience by placing the viewer within the painting itself, not outside the frame looking in. The inner face of the ply panels presents a closed subterranean space, an interior within an interior that inverts the open and elevated views found in the Panoramas and wallpapers of the 1800s.

In the manner of a time capsule, stepping inside a cave is akin to entering the past. Geological processes create extraordinary environments which both preserve and compress the flux and turbulence of nature in an image that is at once peaceful and volatile, immovable and fragile. Indian Chamber captures the cave at a single, silent moment in time. Yet, as an image, the painting is not immobile, its circular nature providing a loop, returning and progressing, without beginning or end.

Anna Kristensen lectures in Painting and Drawing at UNSW College of Fine Arts, having completed her MFA with a University Postgraduate Award in 2008. She was a visiting student at the Universität der Künste, Berlin in 2007. Anna has been a recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including an Australia Council New Work grant in 2010, the Ian Potter Cultural Trust travel grant and AGNSW Denise Hickey studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris in 2009. Her work is included in the collections of Artbank, Shepparton Art Museum and Wollongong City Gallery, and private collections in Australia, Germany and the United States.

Anna is represented by Gallery 9, Sydney, and Kalimanrawlins, Melbourne.