Art Forum: George Egerton-Warburton

Artist

George Egerton-Warburton

Date: 16-Mar-2018

Location: Dechaineux Lecture Theatre, School of Creative Arts, University of Tasmania, Hunter Street, Hobart

George Egerton-Warburton employs text, performance, sculpture, painting and video in his practice which embraces stylistic dissonance, and the syntax of conceptual art. Referring to day-to-day situations, Egerton-Warburton examines the discord between impulses and behaviour shaped by cultural norms. His work, varying in scale and duration, corresponds to the distortion of time in space constructed by late capitalism. At odds with this space, Egerton-Warburton questions it’s affect on mental health, social structures, his relationship with the natural landscape that is simultaneously nostalgic and destructive, and the body’s agency under administrative labour processes required of it. He creates elusive situations anchored by droll humour and irony. Sympathetic structures and topologies of stress are cobbled together in textured installations.

Recent solo exhibitions include English at Chateau Shatto in Los Angeles, The weapon soup boils over, as stocks in metaphors plummet at Artist Curated Projects in Los Angeles, Wincing wind-chime, repugnant fold-out breath at Sutton Gallery in Melbourne, and Administration is just Oulipian Poetry at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art.

Cooking the books is an exhibition by George Egerton-Warburton that considers the notion of “symptom as occupation.” On otherwise unoccupied days, the artist has adopted the practice of making a single, standardised small bed. As they are installed, they suggest there is a symptom in the exhibition space. Adjacent to the beds, a new series of sculptures will antagonise the proposition that language is inherently apologetic; as it seeks to explain. The sculptures rely on the idea that, in the mental process of interpretation, there is a moment of non-compliance, before we “obey” language.

Cooking the Books opens 6pm, Friday 16th March 2018 at Contemporary Art Tasmania

Art Forum talk is 12.30pm Friday 16 MArch 2018 at the Dechaineux Lecture Theatre, School of Creative Arts, University of Tasmania, Hunter Street, Hobart

Both are free events.

This program is a partnership between the School of Creative Arts, University of Tasmania, Hobart and Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Artist