Kristen Radge

Kristen Radge is a practice-led research artist living and working on Guringai and Gadigal Land currently studying Master of Fine Art by Research UNSW. Kristen holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honours and Master of Art from UNSW. Her solo exhibition ‘Corrode’, Balmain Watch House 2020 had paintings purchased for the permanent collection at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney and her exhibition ‘Encountering Sites Disrupted’ 2021 was selected as a Finalist in the Ravenswood Women’s Art Prize 2022. Kristen’s recent exhibitions include ‘Out Of State’, Kil.n.it group exhibition, Compendium Gallery 2023, ‘CeramiXR’, Comber Street Studio Gallery 2023, ‘Blooming’ ‘Water through Reeds Gallery Bungendore 2023, We are Kil.n.it’, Raft Art Space, Northern Territory, part of the Australian Ceramics Triennale 2022 and Saywell Gallery, ‘Woven by Nature’ 2022.

Kristen Radge is a Sydney based artist living on Guringai Land with an art practice in sculptural ceramics, textiles and painting that responds to her experience entering new sites as a post-colonial settler on traditional lands. Her inquiry is through onsite field work as she examines her agency through methodologies that speak of her practice and making process while working on sites that are historically imbedded in colonial land ownership, conflict and struggle. As Kristen surveys a dialogue with found clay on country that remains on site, it is through investigating materiality that her translation of country can be considered. Flooding Vessels are hand-built terracotta earthenware vessels examining the Menindee Lakes waterways, Barkindji Country NSW. By pressing commercial clay into dry claypans, dead fish and organic matter onsite that have been affected by the blue-green toxic algae water degradation to the Darling River system, this method assists Kristen in situating her body in connection to historical events politically, culturally, industrially, and environmentally. The pressed moulds on the vessels surface are unglazed highlighting the environmental impacts from droughts, floodings and thousands of surfaced dead fish that occurs from the toxic blooms.