MELBOURNE.- Tolarno Galleries announced representation of Georgia Spain (b.1993 UK), a visual artist and musician currently living and working in Sandford, Tasmania on palawa land.
In the same week of June this year, Spain's paintings won the 2021 Sir John Sulman Prize for Getting down or falling up, and the Women’s Art Prize Tasmania for Six Different Women. In 2020 Spain was the recipient of the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship.
Spain's paintings explore the complexities of human behaviour; using narrative and storytelling to examine the cultural, political and personal. Her work frequently looks at ideas around human spectacle, theatricality, ritual and ceremony.
She is interested in the emotional and performative exchanges between people in social and psychological spaces and in her paintings physical connection is explored through bodies in groupings.
Artist Elisabeth Cummings, guest Sulman Prize judge, said: "Getting down or falling up is a strong, confident image full of energy and movement. Georgia Spain’s use of the figure is imaginative and very much her own, and the painting is well resolved, vibrant and alive."
Georgia Spain holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts, where she was the recipient of Lionel Gell Foundation Scholarship, and a finalist in the Majlis Travelling Scholarship.
As a singer/songwriter and musician, Georgia Spain has released two solo albums since 2015.
As Spain told the Talking with Painters podcast, "My whole life is around music and art, listening to it and talking about it, and looking at it."
Getting down or falling up is on the cover of the September / October edition of Art Guide, with the feature story "Georgia Spain paints pleasure and conflict".
Georgia Spain will present her first exhibition at Tolarno Galleries in 2022.
Georgia Spain says:
It is not unusual for artists to be the first to take the initiative to help in times of global crisis, being the first to contribute both their time, money and whatever they can within their means, but Ben Quilty’s ongoing dedication to social justice and his ability to galvanise those around him into action, makes me proud to be an artist and gives me a sense of hope in a time where hope can feel fleeting.
I have decided to donate the money from the sale of this new work You, me and the weight to the UNHCR Afghanistan fundraiser because I simply cannot see any reason why I wouldn’t.
I recently came across these words by Sarah Sentilles which say it better than I can:
‘…I think art is revolutionary. I claim it as activism, as political work. It’s not content or subject matter that renders art political. It’s the practice itself. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing a manifesto, painting a landscape, building a tiny diorama of the stars - when you make something, you are exercising the muscles you need to repair the world.’
