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Bekah Carran
(b. Wanganui, New Zealand, 1976; lives and works in Dunedin, NZ)
COMMISSIONED BY Litmus Research Initiative
Bekah Carran, Welcome Home My Beautiful Optimist, 2006, The Physics Room, Christchurch. Image courtesy of Mark Gore
Receptive to notions of the everyday and informed by her observations of the contemporary condition, the work of sculptor Bekah Carran is often realised in poetic installations marked by the refined use of unremarkable materials. Responding, in part, to debates surrounding sustainability and environmental decline, Carran manufactures alternative realities – creating opportunities for reflection and hope. In her 2006 project Welcome Home My Beautiful Optimist she used the simple packing materials of cardboard and tape to construct two geodesic domes – interpreted as shelter – within the white cubes of the Physics Room, Christchurch and Artspace, Auckland. As the Physics Room proposed, “Carran’s installation asks us to leave the imminent threats that surround us at the door. She tests whether in a world increasingly fuelled by anxiety and fear…it is possible to once again embrace aspects of a nostalgic idealism to create a better way of living.” An earlier work, Welcome to Paradise (Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2004), carefully recreated a park bench beneath an apple tree, inviting notions of rest and reflection associated with the outdoors into the context of the gallery and to the conditioned experience of art.
Exhibitions include Telecom Prospect: New Art New Zealand, City Gallery Wellington, (2004); Welcome to Paradise, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2004); Welcome Home My Beautiful Optimist, The Physics Room, Christchurch and Artspace, Auckland (2006); Cosy Dell: a portable garden as part of the series Back Boot, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin.
Carran was born in Wanganui in 1976. She received a BFA from the Otago School of Fine Art in 1998; was the Olivia Spencer Bower Artist in Residence in Christchurch, 2003 and is the Physics Room Artist in Residence, 2007. She lives and works in Dunedin.
One day sculpture project details to follow.
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