Kate Bergin: The Many Rooms of the Accidental Surrealist

Kate Bergin's twenty-sixth solo exhibition The Many Rooms of the Accidental Surrealist continues her engagement with what might be termed the (not) still life genre, one she has developed to such captivating effect over the past thirty years.  

The artist has long been perplexed by the art world's hierarchies and distinctions applied according to genre. "As a genre, still life had a lot of boundaries to break, I felt really excited by that. Why would creative people want boundaries?" she remarks. Just as the mellow behaviour displayed by Bergin's breathless menagerie (including that super chill crocodile) is not one that necessarily aligns with the Taxonomic Hierarchy, her work subverts artistic conventions in a similar way. 

Pivotal in Bergin's artistic development was the book Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting (1990) by Scottish art historian Dr Norman Bryson. She credits this work, which she read contemporaneously (and still has), as formative in the development of her practice, and in building confidence that she could take an unconventional approach. Bergin loves the physicality of paint, experimenting with tone and content, and draws on a diverse range of styles to achieve these brilliantly calibrated mises-en-scène.

Bergin deliberately positions her work between established genres, and explores aspects of more 'antiquated' artistic traditions including vanitas and memento mori, hunting scenes and the 'trophy painting'. Previously she has referenced 'animal studies' from the likes of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Frans Snyders (1579-1657), and George Stubbs (1724-1806). Here, Bergin pays tribute to arguably the preeminent 'animal painter', Sir Edwin Landseer RA (1802-73), and the deep affinity between humans and their animal companions.

Initially the artist worked with taxidermy specimens, but found it limiting and the artificial poses too constricting (although she retains a number of treasured examples in her studio). Her works are based on hundreds of hours spent at zoos and thousands of photographs, deputising her family as research assistants spread out over the site. Bergin's aim is to capture the personality, distinctiveness and quirks of her many subjects, particularly the meticulous attention she pays to their markings and the textures of their various pelts and plumes. In this pursuit she has often referred to the stylistic and technical accomplishments of Dutch Old Master painters such as Jan Weenix (c.1641-1719).

The artist presents scenes of peaceful coexistence between species that have a distinctly Biblical connotation, of life before the Fall in a utopian environment without fear or violence. Bergin's work perpetuates an idea of beauty without cruelty, and could be viewed as a metaphor for harmony, or an antidote to the angsty. She has discerned that animals in zoological institutions seem 'wild but aware', and strangely attuned to the patrons. "Sometimes they pose for you, and you know they're playing with you, and you get the feeling sometimes that you're the one behind the glass, and they're the ones that have control," Bergin contends. Her canvases are replete with the fascination, trepidation, wonderment and desire for connection that we feel towards the more 'exotic' species of the animal world. 

Bergin withholds from the viewer any dénouement to the elaborate scenes she presents, despite strong harbingers of impending calamity. We cannot know whether these precariously balanced assemblies of feathered, furred and scaly fellow travellers will tumble off the table in a clatter of accompanying paraphernalia and flee screeching down the hall. Bergin's compositions might therefore be described as marvels of anticipation, of delayed action... or potential disaster furballs.

While showing great fidelity to the physical traits of the (largely) mammalian cast that populate her incongruous tableaux, Bergin has developed visual codes and motifs that accompany their antics. The dressed table is a civilising influence which situates the protagonists as (comparatively) well-mannered guests in the domestic realm, although the napery has been somewhat more rumpled of late. The artist studied fashion design before transferring to fine arts and has a particular affinity for textiles.

The recurrent telephone reflects Bergin's partiality for film noir and crime serials, but also signifies poor communication. Here it is crowned with an unwieldy crustacean by way of Salvador Dalí (1904-89), her first foray into the underwater biosphere. The phone as a lifeline ('in case of emergency') suggests the potential for a more hazardous outcome should one of the larger guests tire of inter-species parlour games. Critically, it would appear that help can only be summoned by one of the vanishingly small number of people with experience of using a rotary phone (let's also hope that it's not transferred to a call-centre overseas).

The ubiquitous spoons, linked to the quotidian and the intimate, also denote hospitality and receptivity within the space where these creatures are present. The spoon can also be a minor 'trophy', a souvenir brought back from a foreign country, just as wildlife are relocated from native habitats to populate zoos and sanctuaries. The threads, wrapped around limbs, muzzles, beaks, wings, and tangled around the dangling spoons, express Bergin's admiration for the austere and precise style of Spanish realist painter Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560-1627). The allusion to the Greek tale of Damocles, the courtier of King Dionysius, still has remarkable traction over two millennia later.

Spectacles are omnipresent in Bergin's works, exhorting the audience to consider things closely, to notice the details, and not let what is important get lost in the mêlée. The spectacles are often carried aloft by one of the birds, usually finches, that Bergin uses as a compositional device to lead the eye around the canvas. Closely linked to the spectacles is a small ceramic figurine of the Italian adventurer and notorious womaniser Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt(1725-98), a personal talisman purchased by Bergin in Venice during her honeymoon. His arrogance and ego, as recounted in the multi-volume memoir Histoire de ma vie (The Story of My Life) (1825), also speaks of a restlessness and insatiable curiosity which appeals to the artist. This likeness of Casanova is depicted holding a lorgnette through which he peers imperiously in many of the works.

Bergin explores the idea of the 'domestic jungle' we live within and occasionally rail against, with its accumulated clutter, maintenance obligations, and proximity to neighbours. By elevating the domestic space to serve as an improvised wildlife enclosure, the inanimate objects Bergin depicts surpass their utilitarian function to become characters in this household theatre, imbued with particular meaning. The transformation of mundane objects within the artistic process is one that accords with observations made by René Magritte (1896-1967) in his seminal lecture La ligne de vie (The Life Line). Delivered at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp in 1938, Magritte spoke of, "the means devised to force objects out of the ordinary, to become sensational, and so establish a profound link between consciousness and the real world."

Bergin ceased to focus on portraiture and the figure while still an undergraduate, but retains an interest in those disciplines. She first introduced metapainting within her work in 2007, and enjoys the challenge of this visual conceit. Although we can now locate thousands of images on the internet with ease, she references a time when many great artworks were primarily accessed via reproductions in books and magazines, and as glossy posters. Using a recognisable work 'pinned' behind the assembled animal subjects serves to build narrative layers and creates a 'window' out of the still life. In the case of paintings by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) and Edgar Degas (1834-1917) presented here, Bergin uses them to suggest a correlation between the coterie, poised between scratch and flutter, and the static activity in the 'image' behind.

The current body of work sees Bergin utilise the extensive visual language of the surrealists, a label that has occasionally been applied to her work. After visiting the Magritte (2024) exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, she gained a deeper appreciation for the more intimate works by the Belgian master such as the gouache on paper, Illustrated Youth (La jeunesse illustrée) (1937). In this painting, and the earlier horizonal version that includes a pond, we see a strange procession of (presumably loaded) objects forming along a country path, presided over by a seated lion, familiar from Bergin's œuvre. Magritte's bowler hat, and the apple in various states of unpeel, make cameo appearances in her works. The latter gestures to The Listening Room (La chambre d'écoute) (1952), but also hearkens back to the Garden of Eden, and the concept of gravity (of which Bergin's fauna are oblivious).    

With her exploration of structures within structure and embrace of the unlikely, the artist presents herself as the titular 'accidental surrealist' of the exhibition. "There is a slight embrace, a knowing and an accidental embrace of surrealism and the fun that I can now have with it," Bergin concedes. Despite the obligatory melting clock, she prefers to think of her works as realist, situated on the 'edge of the possible', more dreamlike than surreal. That considered, Bergin is certainly open to having her perspective altered...

Inga Walton

Arts Writer and Visual Art Consultant