Christina Read and Psychologist In Conversation

Join Artist Christina Read and Psychologist Dr Mary Grogan for an insightful conversation about art and what it is to be a person.

Christina Read’s work is bright, playful and deeply vulnerable. The UK-born Tāmaki-based artist’s practice spans drawing, painting, collage, textiles and sculpture, all created with a distinctly ‘handmade’ sensibility that reveals the vulnerabilities of being an artist – and a person. Oscillating between fiction and autobiography, Read’s work explores the construction of selfhood, giving language and form to the complexities of living.

Read acknowledges that being a person is hard. Her new commission for Tauranga Art Gallery’s atrium provides a space of goodwill and solace. Sink into the artist’s Cosy Corner beneath the stairs to stop and smell the flowers. Reflect (literally) on what it means to be a person in a new suite of Mirrors and consider the nature of Support Structures in a series of zimmer frame-like hanging mechanisms that physically uplift Read’s work.

Read’s work is uplifting. On a not so good day it cuts deeper…

Dr Mary Grogan has worked as a clinical psychologist in the public and private sectors of mental health seeing individuals and couples for nearly 20 years primarily working with those who have experienced childhood trauma as well as anxiety, stress, and loss. She is very interested in the challenges and opportunities that mid-life presents. She loves the idea from Carl Jung, the celebrated Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of the 20-century, that in the first half of life we strive to establish ourselves personally and professionally out in the world, proving ourselves and establishing adult relationships, while the second half is a much more inward journey to accept and own our full selves and to grow whole. She takes a humanistic, positive psychology and developmental approach to life transitions as it’s often at mid-life we have space for the first time to acknowledge our journey so far. We can then make meaning of what has happened in our lives and act from a sense of what matters to us to create fulfilling lives, while contributing to society.

Admission is free
11am Saturday 5th of August
Coffee & cake served after the conversation