George Egerton-Warburton’s installation Skittles is a combination of readymades that engage fundamentalconcerns such as gesture, narrative, and meaning. A wood chipper, some lobster traps, and a series of garments from Uniqlo socialize to conjure a meditation on lack and excess, wildness, middling, and the internalisation ofauthority. Accompanied by an anonymous rambling text, it speaks with the speed of conspiracy and crisis aboutwhat is desired being attainable, unless what is desired is nothing/destroyed.
Echoing conceptual works such as Chris Burden’s L.A.P.D. Uniforms, Robert Barry’s various gestures of dispersal, and Lutz Bacher’s structural pandemonium, the installation is a single work bound by atmosphere andtone. Its contemporaneity can be felt in the tragicomic idea that submission and radicalization are two sides of the same coin.
George Egerton-Warburton (b. 1988, Kojonup, Western Australia) lives and works in New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Neon Parc, Melbourne, Australia (2024); The Finley, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, Australia (2022, 2019); Guzzler, Melbourne, Australia (2021); Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia (2019); Shoot the Lobster, New York, NY (2019); and Contemporary Art Tasmania, Hobart, Australia (2018). Select group exhibitions include Blind Spot, New York, NY (2024); Inge, Plainview, NY (2024);Nationale Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2023); Benalla Art Gallery, Benalla, Australia (2023); La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, Australia (2023); Tarra Warra Museum of Art, Healesville, Australia (2021); and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth, Australia (2021).