Teelah George draws upon archival information as a departure point for art making. Her woven and painted surfaces are built in response to oral histories, photographs and fragmented timelines. As her works accrue detail, references to these histories become tenuous and abstract, reflecting what she calls the “the same entropic qualities” found in archives and forms of storytelling.
Much like an archive, George’s paintings reveal and conceal. Layers of paint unravel at the edges, giving glimpses of previous incarnations. A top layer of orange, soft yellow or deep blue-black reads as a final utterance that obfuscates what lies below. The trace of George’s meandering brush is like a trailing voice, or a story gathering shape and drifting into oblivion.
Teelah George (b. 1984) lives and works between Perth and Melbourne. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours 1) from Curtin University. Recent exhibitions include THE BOXER IS THE LOVER WITH THE FLOWER IS THE NAKED MOTIF, Gallery 9 Sydney 2020, The Weight, Neon Parc, Melbourne (2019), Sydney Contemporary Art Fair, Gallery 9 (2019), Melbourne Art Fair, Neon Parc, Sydney (2019), A soft gap, Gallery 9 (2018), Primavera: Young Australian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2017); the Ramsay Art Prize, Art Gallery of South Australia (2017); Our Studio Selves, Artspace, Sydney (2017). In 2015 she was a studio resident at Sydney’s Artspace. George is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, MCA Collection, University of Western Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Cruthers Collection of Womens Art, City of Joondalup Collection, Art Gallery of WA, Macquarie Bank Collection, Monash University Collection and Artbank.
