Georgina Starr
(1968 - ) |
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Art Work
| Name: |
Georgina Starr |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Leeds, United Kingdom |
| Nationality: |
British |
| Birth: |
1968 |
| Death: |
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| Website: |
http://www.georginastarr.com/ |
| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
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| Medium: |
found objects |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
Young British Artists |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Installation
Sculpture
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Biography
There are two minor works by Georgina Starr in the Tate Collection: the video English Rose (1996) made in collaboration with Tracey Emin, Carl Freedman and Gillian Wearing; and the screenprint You stole my look (1997), which appears as part of the installation Tuberama: A musical on the Northern line (1997-8), decorating the wall of Old Street Station. Tuberama is typical Starr, a weird, inventive and amusing mix of animation, music, a life-sized set and an electric train. It tells the story of tube travelers who do not get where they intended to go (a common enough experience in today's public transport system). Rather than being grimly realist. Starr's imagination takes off, transporting her characters to a town called Dopplestadt, inhabited by their doubles. Stan revives a phenomenon that appears in literature, including Dostoevsky's novel The Double (1846).
Starr often appears in her installations. She becomes a figure with special powers, part of a musical extravaganza, or is seen at different ages. Both 'Georgina' and 'little Georgina' appear in Visit to a small planet {1994-5), a multi-media work which includes a film script. It developed from a Jerry Lewis film, but Starr's piece is more to do with her memory and interpretation of the movie than its reality. 'Little Georgina' met an alien, who returns to see her sixteen years later. Her older self is an 'artist of sorts', who lives in her own 'rich fantasy life'. As the script cuts backwards and forwards across time, we see Starr visiting a studio where a male artist is painting a woman in a pose 'very similar to the Manet painting of Olympia'. The model complains. 'If you paid me a wage which wasn't from the 19th century I might stay still for longer' Starr's interior life is also the subject of Hypnodreamdruff (1996), and she is the focus of 'Starrwood', a theme park she designed in 1999.
The fact that Starr trained at the Slade gives extra punch to her focus on her inner life. The Slade was one of the earliest institutions in Britain to offer women art students full professional training, and a number of them, including Gwen John, explored their identities as both women and artists in their work. As a student Starr made a piece of music by mapping the resting place of paper darts which she had thrown, laying the pattern over sheet music, and playing the resulting notes on a record in the Slade building. She is the member of two bands, 'Pony' and 'Dick Donkey's Dawn'. Now Starr's own music might enter the collective unconscious as the soundtrack to secret fantasies. |
Samples of Work
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