London-born Georgia Spain is a contemporary painter and musician based in Sandford, Tasmania. She has quickly gained recognition for her figurative paintings which explore the dynamics of human behaviour.
Read MoreBorn in London, Georgia Spain grew up in Melbourne and is now based in Sandford. She graduated with a BFA in painting from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne in 2015, where she was the recipient of the Lionel Gell Foundation Scholarship and a finalist for the Margaret Lawrence Gallery's Majlis Travelling Scholarship. In 2020, Spain was the recipient of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Alongside her artistic practice, Spain is also a musician and has released two solo albums since 2015.
In her paintings, Georgia Spain explores cultural, political, and personal dimensions of human behaviour using narrative and storytelling devices. Often examining themes of theatricality, ritual, ceremony, and spectacle, Spain's paintings portray abstracted figures in arrangements ranging from pairings to large groups. The artist states: 'I often investigate bodies in groupings, touching on an instinctive engagement between people in crisis or communion.'
Spain's earlier works such as The Finale and Nothing on the Table (both 2020) portray recognisable collective interactions—an outdoor carnival-like event and a boardroom meeting. Though simplified in form, the figures are clearly demarcated from their setting and each other. Following paintings reflect a shift in practice, leaning towards contemporary expressionism with loose, gestural brushstrokes and mark-making that underpin explorations of the sociopolitical complexities of collective behaviour. You, me and the weight (2021) presents around a dozen faceless figures tightly clustered in various poses, their relationship unclear. Similarly, Getting down or falling up (2021) is dominated by an entangled mass of anonymous figures against a background reduced to patches of colour, their limbs outstretched and bodies angled in multiple directions.
Spain works primarily in acrylic on large-scale canvas, using a fleshy, restrained colour palette. Her figures are often nude or partially clothed, with rough indications of facial features. Painterly suggestions of exposed internal bodily features such as bones, muscles, or thin lines suggestive of arteries or veins lend Spain's paintings a visceral sense of tension and vulnerability.
The artist cites influences from literature, film, popular culture, and mythology. On Six Different Women (2021), Spain states: '[this painting] was initially inspired by a scene describing the maenads in Greek mythology ... My intention in this painting was to depict a more tender moment between the women, as a nod to the power of female relationships and female friendship.'
In 2021, Spain's work Six Different Women (2021) won the Trawalla Foundation Acquisitive Prize in the Women's Art Prize Tasmania. In the same year, Spain was announced as winner of the Sir John Sulman Prize for her work, Getting down or falling up (2021).
Solo exhibitions by Georgia Spain include Both Ways is the Only Way I Want, The Egg & Dart (online), Thirroul, Australia (2021); (Beginning in Blue) Left in Red, The Egg & Dart (2020); The Spectators, Schoolhouse Gallery, Melbourne (2019); Strange Family, The Diggers Store, Campbells Creek, Australia (2018).
Selected group exhibitions and presentations featuring Georgia Spain include Sydney Contemporary, The Egg & Dart (2020); Another, another; One, Easey Street Artist Studio and Gallery, Melbourne (2015); Majlis Travelling Scholarship, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne (2015); and Proud, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne (2014).
Spain is represented by Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne. Her website can be found here, and her Instagram can be found here.
Misong Kim | Ocula | 2021
