Eline McGeorge
to be part to be many
Exhibition Spaces on the 2nd Floor
17.10.–17.11.2024

Eline McGeorge’s mixed media installation to be part to be many emerges from the results of a long-term artistic research project where nature and climate change are central. During research trips, artist residencies and trans­disci­plinary collaborations, her explorations of media and artistic techniques have deve­loped in parallel to research on changing environ­ments and the contexts in which they take place.

McGeorge’s project docu­ments places and situations of various scales – from gigantic open pit coal mining landscapes in Colombia and adjacent hotspots for bird biodiversity, to tiny succulent plants native to a diamond-mined region of the Namib desert. She has investi­gated habitat degradation impacting bird cliffs of Northern Norway, and the Oslo fjord area where the endemic but­terfly species lakris­mjelt­blå­vinge recently has disap­peared.

Over the course of her research, McGeorge has processed her impressions and expe­ri­ences through field­notes in the shape of water­colour sketches. A selection of field­notes are shown in the installation as double spread pages cut out from McGeorge’s note­books. The water­colour medium allows for motifs to transform and merge into one another.

These sketches also inform the two large canvases that function as walls in the instal­lation. Hybrid figures, painted with water soluble oil paint and dye from mush­rooms gathered by the artist, change shape and merge with motifs that have direct refe­rence to the places and subjects of this research.

A group of woodcut mono­prints titled The sea around us are made from plywood found during an artist resi­dency at Skomvær light­house. As a substitute for a printing press, the wood cuts were printed with help from fellow resident artists’ feet, whose foot­prints can be seen as part of the atmo­spheric motif.

McGeorge uses complex source material to make inquiries into politi­cal and eco­no­mic views on value. A woven textile created from emerg­ency blankets, entitled The sea around us, Medusa head, comments on the Nor­wegian Parlia­ment's decision to open a large deep-sea area of the Green­land Sea for mining explo­ration. Frag­ments of mineral rich geological for­mation – which in addition to being mine­able are also the basis for much of the deep-sea life of the region, the brittle star species ‘Medusa Head’ (English: ‘Gorgon’s head’, latin: Gorgo­no­cephalus), and parts of the Norwegian Par­lia­ment can be glimpsed in-between the warp of the shim­mering material. The title of this piece is a reference to Rachel Carson’s still rele­vant book The sea around us, published in 1951.

The video montage Fieldnote video — to be part to be many entwines field recor­dings from the various research loca­tions by utilising digital and analogue effects that occurred while filming.

McGeorge is concerned with artistic reflection and arti­cu­lation that serves to make acces­sible her thematic and factual refe­rences. This is also the intention of the book crwa, which weaves fictional and factual narra­tives, offering a deeper insight into her environ­mental obser­vations.

Eline McGeorge (b. 1970) is an Oslo based artist, and holds a Master of Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, 2000. Her practice approaches complex and urgent con­tem­porary topics through material explo­ra­tions. Influenced by science fiction, feminist lega­cies and histories of self-organisation, she is concerned with questions surroun­ding demo­cratic processes and the environ­ment. McGeorge explores these topics through a variety of media, ranging from low-tech, imp­ro­vised craft techniques to digital media, from abs­tract to directly referential or docu­men­tary methods, as well through text and pub­li­cations.

Recent solo exhibitions include Here Between Worlds, 2020, and On Joint Flight Lines, 2018, Hollybush Gardens, London, As Spaces Fold, Companions Meet, Oslo Kunst­forening, 2016, and Among Familiar Strangers and Surveilled Places, Foto­galleriet, Oslo, 2007. Her work has been featured in group exhi­bi­tions, such as Our Silver City, 2094, Nottingham Contem­porary, Nottingham, 2021, Future Knowledge, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, 2018, Rivers of Emotion, Bodies of Ore, Trondheim Kunsthall, Trondheim, 2018, Ode til en vaskeklut, hymne til en tiger (Ode to a Wash­cloth, Hymn to a Tiger), Kunstner­for­bundet, 2017 and Stav­anger Kunst­hall, 2018, and Vi lever på en stjerne (We Are Living on a Star), Henie Onstad Art Center in 2014. Her works have been acquired by collections both in the UK and Norway.

McGeorge is been repre­sented by the galleries Hollybush Gardens, London since 2005 and since 2024, by Femten­sesse, Oslo, where the sketch material for the exhibiton in Kunstner­forbundet, in shown in the exhibition Field­notes – to be part to be many, which is open until November 2nd.

The exhibition project is supported by the Muni­ci­pality of Oslo, Arts and Culture Norway and the Norwegian Visual Artists Fund (BKV).