Eline McGeorge
Wall Works
34 x 24 cm
On Joined Flight Lines 2, 2018, cotton, watercolour, various threads, 194 x 144 cm [detail]
On Joined Flight Lines 1, 2018, cotton, watercolour, various threads, 270 x 157 cm [detail]
In On Joined Flight Lines, 2018, McGeorge has used watercolour on fabric, involving a process of tearing apart and stitching back together, destroying and mending. The work serves as restitution for the figures of extinct animals and plants, each painted and commemorated on fabric. In No(1) of this series, textures and traces of stitches and threads share the surface with various figures that belong to an ongoing history of extinction. A biomatic figure is camouflaged in a pattern that reoccurs in the textile works, a pattern of an eggshell belonging to a seabird under threat due to the thinning of its shell as a result of environmental toxins.
Biomatic Notes 1-12, 2018, inkjet print from pencil drawing original, 36 x 27 cm
Biomatic Notes 1-12, 2018, inkjet print from pencil drawing original, 36 x 27 cm
Biomatic Notes 1-12, 2018, inkjet print from pencil drawing original, 36 x 27 cm
In a series of pencil drawings Biomatic notes 1-12 / On Joined Flight Lines, 2018, fine lines or dots form cloud or swarm-like shapes hinting at the emergence of new biomatic figures. Here, some of the figures are hybrids: either part human, part machine, or part human, part animal—each suggesting a multi-species being.
When Species Meet, Biomatic Hand and Seeds, 2015, inkjet print on Hahnejuhle Photo Rag paper, 70.7 x 50 cm
When Species Meet, Biomatic Encounter, 2015, inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper, 70.7 x 50 cm
When Species Meet, Biomatic Pixels and Seeds, 2015, inkjet print on Awagami Inkjet Paper, 29.7 x 42 cm
The pixels in the weave share the visual character trait of the ‘Biomat’, a character appropriated from a Norwegian science fiction series from the 1970s called Blindpassasjer, (Stowaway/Free Rider). The Biomat is a shapeshifter constituted by programmable molecules which can dissolve or coalesce into a cloud of pixels, in this instance assuming the shape of a human figure. In the Norwegian series, the Biomat enters a Norwegian starship exploring a newly discovered red planet. On this planet, the Biomat is a guardian of nature and portrayed as an obstacle and enemy to the crew onboard the ship. A struggle ensues, and the Biomat is finally destroyed leading to a resolved, happy ending. To McGeorge, the Biomat embodies the conflict that exists between humans and the rest of the natural world, an omnipresent paradox where something or someone protecting nature can be perceived as a threat to human interests.
Folded Space, 2012, are four large-scale prints that point to McGeorge’s research into loss of information and distortion in digital image making. For McGeorge, this loss can be seen as the misrepresentation of information inherent in divided political and economical space.
Video Montage
With the Free Rider into the Oil Age and Beyond, 2013, video montage and animation, HQ-video, sound, 12’00” [still]
A World of Our Own, 2012, starts with a protagonist’s voice: ‘I identify with many persons, like Valeska Gert and Édith Piaf and Patti Smith and Ariana Foster and Rosa Luxemburg…I think she was a freedom fighter. She was singing love songs and, eh, true life reports.’ The montage weaves together stories of various Cosmo-figures; female explorers of worlds known and unknown, actual and fictional, freedom fighters across different times and places who assemble for a future mission in the world’s largest financial centre. They are linked in time and space through a montage of various elements such as drawn animation and video footage either found or recorded by the artist. This content is combined with sound from different sources: interview excerpts, radio transmission, music. Both elusive and concrete, A World of Our Own addresses current political struggles and feminist legacies.
Sculpture
Seed Capsules, 2015, seeds, soil, clay, fermented comfrey, nutrition, dimensions variable
Seed Capsules, 2015, seeds, soil, clay, fermented comfrey, nutrition, dimensions variable
The floor-based piece 2000 Seed Capsules, 2015, takes inspiration from Masanobu Fukuoka and his book ‘The One-Straw Revolution’ from 1978. Working together with a Norwegian plant sociologist, McGeorge has collected seeds that enhance biodiversity and soil quality. The capsules consist of seeds and nutrition components packed into a small ball of soil and clay. The capsules differ slightly in colour, from a chalky white to a darker, clay grey. Installed on the floor the dots are spread out to form an abstract pattern.
Travelling Doubles, Sculpture 1, 2007, plywood, colour pencil, pine wood, 225 x 60 x 70 cm
Travelling Doubles, Sculpture 1, 2007, plywood, colour pencil, pine wood, 225 x 60 x 70 cm [detail]
EXHIBITIONS at Hollybush Gardens
Eline McGeorge: A World of Our Own
23 March – 29 April 2012
Eline McGeorge
18 September – 25 October 2009
TEXTS
Hollybush Issue 7
August 2020
Conversation with Henriette Gunkel
A conversation between Eline McGeorge and Henriette Gunkel, from the catalogue As Spaces Fold, Companions Meet (London: Dent-De-Leone, 2017)
A World of Our Own
Essay by Marcus Verhagen, from the catalogue As Spaces Fold, Companions Meet (London: Dent-De-Leone, 2017)
Space is the Place: The Exhibition as a Microcosm
Essay by Marianne Hultman, from the catalogue As Spaces Fold, Companions Meet (London: Dent-De-Leone, 2017)
ALT I ALT (Overall)
Review by Nora Joung, Kunstkritikk, 17 February 2016
We Are Living on a Star
Excerpt from the catalogue We Are Living on a Star, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Norway, 2014
Hollybush Gardens in Conversation with Eline McGeorge
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Travelling Doubles, 2007
BIOGRAPHY
Eline McGeorge (b. 1970, Norway) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Recent solo exhibitions include On Joined Flight Lines, Hollybush Gardens, London (2018); As Spaces Fold, Companions Meet, Oslo Kunstforening (2016); A World of Our Own, Hollybush Gardens, London (2012); Travelling Doubles, Hollybush Gardens, London (2009) and Gallery Kirkoff, Copenhagen (2008); and Among Familiar Strangers and Surveilled Places, Fotogalleriet, Oslo (2007). Her work has been shown in exhibitions internationally, including in Our Silver City, 2094, Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2021); Future Knowledge, Modern Art Oxford, UK (2018); Rivers of Emotion, Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway (2018); Ode to a Dishrag, Hymn to a Tiger, Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2019) and Oslo Kunstnerforbund (2017); Time Being Time, Museum of Contemporary Art, Banja Luka, Bosnia (2014); We Are Living on a Star, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway (2014); 27 Senses, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2010); and Momentum, Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway (2009).
Her work is held in the collections of London Underground, London, UK; National Collection of Contemporary Drawing, Limerick, IR; City of Oslo Art Collection, Oslo, NO; Ålesund Kunstmusem KUBE, NO; Norwegian School of Economics, NO; and Bergen Academy of Art and Design, NO.