George Eksts uses video, photography, sculpture and printmaking to explore ideas of progress, completion, entropy and the temporary.
An emphasis on form and structure over content defines much of his work. Tools are presented as ends instead of means, valued for their inherent potential rather than any definite product. Obsolete media are re-purposed as materials for drawing and scuplture. Eksts removes the obvious function of things we take for granted and flips them around to offer instead a sense of infinite, open-ended possibilities.
In his ongoing series of Endless Videos, each video shows an action that never ends: two men standing outside a theatre, a train moving through an urban landscape, men at work. Instead of ‘time standing still’, a moment of time becomes a moment in perpetual motion, beyond completion.
Born in the UK in 1978
Lives and works in London
Education
2008 – 2011 MA Printmaking, Royal College of Art, London
1999 – 2002 BA, Photography, Falmouth College of Art, UK
Solo Exhibitions
2015
Casual Cursive, Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury
Development Heaven, University of Hertfordshire Galleries
2014
Cause Unknown, Tintype, London
2013
Fondation Ecureuil, Art Festival Toulouse, France
2012
Incredible Utility, Concrete, Hayward Gallery, London
Infinials, Tintype, London
Group Exhibitions
2019
Line/Extended, UH Arts, Hatfield
2018
Whitechapel Open, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London June – August
2016
8 x 8 Mah Jong Re-imagined a collaboration between French furniture designers Roche Bobois in partnership with ArtReview.
Of the Sea, No.1 Smithery: The Gallery, The Historic Dockyard, Chatham
Explorers: Chapitre 1 at Loft 19, Galerie Suzanne Tarasiève, Paris
2013
Metamorphose(s), Centre d’Art Contemporain Walter Benjamin in Perpignan, France
2012
New Contemporaries, Liverpool Biennale, ICA, London
Hospitable Plains, BAF, Brussels
FIEA, Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, France
Rote Learning, CUSP, Leicester
Great Experimentalists, Royal College of Music, London
2011
Furlough Group Show, Burlington Fine Arts Club, Manchester
Show 2011 Royal College of Art, London
Darkness Visible, Group Show, Sculpture Dept, RCA, London
2010
Echoes of Other Worlds, Group Show, Stables Gallery, Twickenham
Battles of Ideas, Group Show, RCA, London
24/7 Group Show, Gooden Gallery, London
Bolton Street Project, Group Show, London
Anything You Can Do, Café Gallery, London
2009
Lot 78 Presents, London
Up Down, Up, Down, Left, Left Right, Select, Start, Hockney Gallery, RCA, London
2005
SightSonic Digital Arts Festival, York, Video Installation for Artists’ Platform
Electric Pavilion multimedia art commission, Watershed Art Centre, Bristol
Residencies / Events
PLOP Residency, London Sept/Oct 2019
Feb 2014 – May 2014, Bemis Center Residency, Omaha, US
Oct 2011 – June 2013, Royal Academy Schools Fellowship, London
Oct – Dec 2009, Studio Residency, Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris
March 2009, Print in 3D Symposium, V & A Museum
Jan – Sept 2006, Artist’s Talk and presentation of work, Baden-Württemberg-Stipendium, Stuttgart, Germany Animation residency in design studio