Jamie George
My work explores various enactments of loss and breakage. Examining how things may be defined by what is lacking, missing, absent or fallen away in the making processes of the work and other types of narrative, interpersonal or cultural losses.
Casting is a key process in my work, enabling me to explore the transformation of reclaimed materials. I am interested in gestures of reduction or stripping away alongside the inverse – over-explanation and exorbitance. Too little, too much. Ruinous, restorative.
Recent resin relief works (Magazine series) have embedded personal paraphernalia cast into them – the stuff you struggle to keep yet is near-impossible to through away. Lack, a series of wall-based cast pigmented plaster works originate from the iconic design of an Ikea float shelf. The work denotes loss of function and a breakdown in the surface through vandalism and wear.
Sculptures and prints are cross-referenced to and with writings that examine everyday encounters. Feelings of relief, experiences of measurement or volume, the characteristics of the components of a flight of stairs, or a saturated, damp, and mouldy home. My current practice draws on my PhD research, where I explored how sculptures utilise a ‘forgetful memory’ — a reflexive process of positing, junking and reimagining relationships to cultural information.
Bio: Jamie George is an artist based in South East London. After studying Fine Art at Goldsmiths and sculpture at The Slade School of Fine Art in 2013, Jamie completed a PhD at Cambridge School of Art. Jamie has worked on projects, commissions and exhibitions with Jerwood Visual Arts, Glasgow Sculpture Studios, South Kiosk, Drawing Room, SPACE Studios, Showroom, Wysing Arts Centre and Organhaus Gallery (China). In 2012 he was awarded a Gasworks International Fellowship and was an artist-in-resident at Vasl Artist-Collective, Pakistan. In 2014 he was awarded a Cocheme Fellowship from CSM, UAL, hosted by AIR Studios. In 2018 he was awarded a Jerwood Arts artist bursary. Catalyst Arts recently selected Jamie's work for the OUTPOST Members Show 2021. In autumn 2021, Jamie took part in the interdisciplinary residency at Hospitalfield, Scotland. Jamie is one of four recipients of the Omni Colour Artist Award 2021. Lack, a solo exhibition with an accompanying publication, Lacking, was presented at SE8 Gallery, Deptford, London (2022), working closely with the gallery directors and curators Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley. Jamie is also a founding editor of dreck.co.uk, an online platform for developing artistic responses to cultural detritus. He is also a member of the band Bulkwash.
