In Georgia Spain’s painting our complex physical interconnection is explored through bodies in groupings. Each work touches at an instinctual engagement between people in crisis or communion. As figures emerge in the paint through gesture and layer, their dependence on one another is palpable. These are expressive bodies, human and animal, in relation.
Spain’s studio lies in the bush near Hobart, Tasmania. The Beginning in blue (left in red) paintings were made there during Australia’s most recent bushfire season. I found a clue to the show’s title on her studio wall: blue = known, red = the unknown. This seems both an observation on the puzzle of painting and a note on the shifting colour of a bushfire sky. Pinned to the studio wall are a few pictures documenting the recent fires. The beach and related paintings have located their deep red settings via these colour references. Spain may look to a family photo or media image to begin but soon diverts and immerses into the space of the painting. The surfaces show the malleability and adjustment that oil paint offers. The central embrace in Comfort becomes a kind of double figure. Limbs, torsos and faces reform dynamically.
Two catastrophes have directed and now redirected our movements. Georgia Spain’s work binds together these new forms of association as shared physical and emotional states: vulnerability, separation, loss, communion. And while her work explores crisis, there is a deep sense of care and connection evident here.
Georgia Spain was born in London and graduated from the Victorian College of Arts in 2015. She has shown in various group and solo shows. This is Georgia Spain’s first solo show with The Egg & Dart.
-Melody Willis
