BEAUTY AND THE MACABRE

(Gallerysmith Project Space, North Melbourne, October 2017)

Close to Krieger's heart is the vulnerability of animals and the transient nature of life. Her body of work explores how human activity has affected Australian wildlife today. Through deforestation, fossil fuels and introduced species we are rapidly damaging our eco system.

Beauty and the Macabre displays both the positive and negative changes that have been made through our own doing and undoing. Extinction and climate change are the ugly elements of our intervention, but there's also stories of survival and rejuvenation through programmes to save our endangered species.

Influenced by the movements of the Vanitas and Momento Mori, Krieger chose not to delve too deeply into death and decay but produced a body of work implementing her own arrangements of unstill life. Her paintings display collections of Australian flora and fauna, including the living, extinct and endangered.

The viewer is firstly drawn to the beauty of the work, only to question its inference.