Georgina Batty

London, UK
Residency: May-June 2005

Batty constructs ambiguous objects that refuse to assert themselves by being hard to find. She also creates structures that navigate the viewer to otherwise unreachable places, often as a pretext for a single overlooked point on that journey. Interested in the entropy of objects, she examines the loss of perfection that occurs when design intentions become lived realities. Fascinated by the vulnerable relationship between an object and its function she gravitates to things that have lost their utility such as dust, waste, empty rooms. Her works invite the viewers’ interaction allowing for incidental encounters that can spark unique moments.

Some works involve camouflaged structures that draw attention to their presence through a subtle device or clue. Sweating Wall, 2002 was part of Batty’s Slade MFA show, in which she sectioned off an area of the room with a metallic tank that she turned into a wall. Its surface was painted to mimic exactly the rest of the room and a concealed cooling system kept the wall cold. Condensation formed on its surface and a pool formed at its base. The effect however was barely visible; most visitors thought the room was simply a damp room.

In other works Batty leads the viewer to normally inaccessible areas or features of a space. For Ramp and Walkway, 2003 (Beaconsfield Gallery) she built a corridor which enabled access to an otherwise inaccessible high level window at the back of the exhibition space. Entry into the corridor that comprised an enclosed ramp and horizontal walkway is built directly from the doorway leading to the exhibition space preventing access to the exhibition space. At the top of the ramp the viewer was able to crouch and look through the window onto one of the busiest tracks in London where trains passed at eye-level every few minutes. When empty, the window acted as a camera lens and images were projected on the back wall of the corridor. Over the course of the exhibition the white structure became covered in marks left by visitors.

Batty gravitates to things which have lost their utility and/or function. In Utica she made site-specific subtle works on distressed and abandoned shops and ‘spaces’. She re-instated signs containing new text appropriated from love songs, such as “I guess I can’t smile without you”. On Flag Day she installed a hand made flag of lost socks collected from an adjacent Laundromat in Columbia Square. Batty received both her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the Slade School of Art, London, UK. She has recently completed a residency on the Isle of Sheepy, UK. Her exhibitions include "Tonight," Studio Voltaire, London, UK; "Vectors," The PM Gallery, London, UK; and she has been commissioned by Prema Gallery, Beaconsfield Gallery, and Wapping Project (Jerwood Commission).