GEORGE MARGUET PEW
My practice is one to be explored by all, pushing towards the inner lives of people through my metaphorical installation, in which is set to gentrify an area and the people within it. My work plays with spaces inside the gallery and out in the public realm, creating a wider set community and accessibility. This has a main purpose of exploring and encouraging various different people from potential different cultures to delve in and try to use art as a release and exploration of themselves, operating in a world of machismo and the language of gentrification and well-being awareness.
Since exhibiting work in Oxford Medical Science Teaching Centre, in an exhibition - Loop Hole 2015, I have a greater understanding of context and how it causes change in a works perception. So now swaying from two spaces, gallery and the public realm, this puts me in a position on the cusp of both worlds, allowing me to guide people into both sides of my practice. Using the public realm as a place for me to construct art intervention, producing dialogue between various different people and my gentrified something. Taking this material to the gallery space also allows for a context removal and a platform for all opinions on the public intervention and gentrification. This is also why I use the gallery space as a place for an inner life conversation, creating a clinical space for people to delve into themselves.
These ideas were presented in my exhibition, Into the Threshold 2016, where it encompassed pieces of work in relation to inner life. This was explored through the metaphorical tool of the door (threshold), which gave me and my interviewees a standing and an excuse for deeper personal questions and answers. On entrance into the space you are greeted by a floor plan which shall guide a person around the exhibition, prompting a way to experience and emphasize all the work that takes up the space.
My current projects are aiming to develop upon the satirical nature of my work, employing emphasise on my role as an accessory to my sculpture and installation. Using sculpture as a platform allows me to alter or invert either the context of language in relation to the sculpture that I am using as a basis for discussion. With all of these techniques running parallel, I’m able emphasize inner thoughts which may not be initially pushed upon due to restrictions of management speak or art language. Therefore, I am channelling my practice towards a humorous approach to dialogue and the disarming of the pretentious stigma that contemporary art has, as well as a stereotyped hostile approach one may have towards art.
Moments like these I have seen within the woks of Patrick Goddard, highlighting details of the everyday that may be overseen or perceived with an awkward or attempted avoidant nature.