Kristin Velle-George
Kristin Velle-George is based in Stavanger, Norway. She graduated from the Bergen Art Academy, Norway, with a Master’s Degree in 2010. Since then she has exhibited in a wide range of galleries and venues, both in solo and group shows. Her works have got very fine critics.
Velle-George is co-founder and co-owner of the artist hub Elefanten AS, a creative working space in Stavanger. From the start in 2011 until 2016, she was one of the curators behind the artist run exhibition space Prosjektrom Normanns.
WORK
For several years Velle-George’s main focus has been graphite drawing on paper. She has developed a distinctive drawing style, her drawings often having a micro-focus that is based on small or almost invisible things around us. Her recent work shows a sea change in her production methods, reflecting her ambition to blur the boundaries between drawing and sculpture.
Maintaining her previous organic focus, her sculptures are the results of various material experiments using items such as wooden sticks, sponges, inflatable bathing animals and pig intestines. Through her open use of materials and exploration of form, Velle-George seeks to create a perplexing yet poetic view of this world.
The starting point for these works are trivial or ignored objects she finds in her environment. It is the experience of transmutation itself which fuels Velle-George’s intuitive process, she is excited by the possibilities at her finger tips in the very creation of something that both captures and confuses. Through obscuring, manipulating, or disguising, objects which were previously ignored and neglected may now be seen in a new light; the original familiarity is now latent but hidden. When objects are removed from their original context they are nudged slightly out of our reality. When our senses are unsettled in this way, the banal gives way to the bewildering.
Kristin Velle-George has been exhibited at variously: USF Verftet, Bergen, Norway; Open Source Gallery, New York, USA; Untitled Art Fair, Miami, Florida, USA; Mellom Himmel og Fjord, Hardanger, Norway; Rogaland Art Centre, Stavanger, Norway; Kurant Exhibition Room, Tromsø, Norway; Skien Art Association, Norway. In 2014 she completed a major solo exhibition at Bryne Art Association, Norway. This exhibition was well received by the public and critical media alike.
