Georgie Roxby Smith's Page

Primarily a sculptor and installation artist, Georgie Roxby Smith’s ongoing exploration of global social and economic systems probes the imagined morph between the concepts of “grid –matrix”. Through envisioning the systems we live under as multidimensional matrices and rebuilding them as analogue machine, mutated, bulging and seemingly infinitely reproducing, the work explores the system in collapse, organically morphed by the people who live within it.

Through these works in installation as architectural and social intervention, her practice and conceptual aims have extended to an exploration of what it means to live locally under the systems or space flows in today’s global cities. In cities where the loss of public space, local economies and local practices are being overrun, the seemingly small acts of intervention by artists such as Belgium born Francis Alys, one of Roxby Smith’s main influences, show that these global flows can be interjected with local acts exposing the seemingly impenetrable systems as flawed. It is with this in mind that Roxby Smith began a series of architectural and social interventions and installations in the city of Melbourne aimed to disturb the urban flow of these invisible global systems. These interventions are then re – presented within her sculptural and installation works – literally making these flawed human moments visually part of the “machine” – albeit glitches within it. These inclusions also serve to monumentalise the local amidst the global machine and reinject the personal and poetic into these seemingly anonymous flows. More recently she has begun to incorporate the virtual cities of Second Life into her work – creating interventions and exploring glitches within this digital world using her self portrait avatar.

Often incorporating sound, lighting and sensual elements such as fan forced air and animated industrial materials, her installations overrun specific sites and spaces, forcing the viewer to physically explore and navigate these new systems. Computer circuit boards, industrial ducting, electrical piping, foam packaging and other materials line the walls and drip from the ceilings to create all immersive environments, primarily lit by her projections and small LED lights highlighting hidden nooks and corners. Many of these systems are aurally active – droning, beeping and breathing through her use of installation specific soundscapes.

Amongst other projects, Georgie has taken part in the Melbourne International Arts Festival for the past three years including ‘Navigators’ 2006 (for which she received the Eldon and Anne Foote Trust Travel Grant), ‘John Cage’s Musicircus’ 2007 and, in 2008, is contributing to ‘Longing Belonging Land’ on opening night and assisting NY artist Chris Doyle with his ‘Ecstatic City’ installation.