UWU Channel Radiance envelopes Cubitt’s gallery with vibrant curtains and carpet throughout. Softening the gallery’s cold cement floor and stark white walls, Georgieva transforms her venue into a commercialized stage. In entering the exhibition through its curtained doorway, the viewer is met with 'Full-Bodied Gentle Woman': a silk-stuffed pelvis hanging from bungee cords. Green silk on one side and a collage of 90s female pop icons on the other, 'Full-Bodied Gentle Woman' exhibits Georgieva’s approach to the intersections of feminine iconography.
.
Across the gallery, the exhibition’s seven-screen video installation, 'Sybil's Noon Shower of Stones', verberates with a kaleidoscope of femme characters and silhouettes. The central video, commissioned exclusively for this exhibition, sees the artist as a contemporary news-reader. Employing Cubitt’s algorithm as prompt, Georgieva delivers poetic news headlines eliciting an uncertain and dystopic future. Set to a psychedelic and haunting soundtrack by Naima Karlsson consuming the gallery space, Georgieva embodies the inter-dimensional figure of the oracle and brings forward a dark yet satirical series of prophecies.
.
Through research into Cubitt’s extensive archive of the organization’s 30-year history, an algorithm was developed from past data sets. Using input materials such as exhibition press releases and artist bios, the algorithm is capable of generating artist names, birth dates, and educational backgrounds alongside exhibition titles and press statements leading up to the year 3000. In the culmination of this research, Gery Georgieva’s UWU Channel Radiance employs the algorithm’s speculative look at Cubitt’s archive in determining her own uncertain future. Requiring human analysis and deconstruction, like all data sets, Georgieva takes on a playful yet cynical expression of the archive. Working within themes of popular culture, folklore, and internet DIY aesthetics, Georgieva critically engages with popular and historical representations of the feminine.
.
UWU Channel Radiance is part of the ongoing project Universal Work Unfinished which responds to research conducted by curator Julia Greenway and ongoing conversations with artist Gery Georgieva. The custom algorithm was developed in collaboration with Black Shuck, the UK based co-operative producing digital projects.
.
This exhibition is generously supported by Arts Council England and presented in partnership with Cubitt Artists.
-
Gery Georgieva (b. 1986 Varna, Bulgaria) is an artist based in London. Her work encompasses video, performance, multimedia installations and musical collaborations. Through a process of performative self-staging and improvisation, she uses the immediacy of her own body as material to consider the construction of taste, personal empowerment and cultural configuration. Recent projects include: Mending a Broken World (with Lenke Rothman), Sörmlands Museum, Nyköping; На Чешмата: At The Source, performed at Palais De Tokyo and Block Universe, London; The Blushing Valley, Swimming Pool Projects, Sofia and Polythene Queen, Hunter/Whitfield, London. Her video works have been screened at Whitechapel Gallery, South London Gallery, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, FRAC Bordeuax, MOCA Cleveland, Ohio, Frieze Art Fair, London & Channel 4 amongst others.
Many thanks to Cubitt staff and artists, particularly Lizzy Whirrity, Kadeem Oak and director Amal Khalaf.
Thank you to collaborators and supporters Naima Karlsson, Vanessa Onwuemezi, Dorothy Allen-Pickard, Anna Paterson, Chris Kluster Smith, Ben Deakin, Scott Travis, Louis-Jack, Theo Leanse, Miglena Georgieva, Arebyte and Goldsmiths College.
Photos: Damian Griffiths
GERY GEORGIEVA'S ~~~ BLOG ~~~
CONTACT: emailgery@gmail.com
