George Eksts is a London based artist using animation, photography, drawing and sculpture to explore ideas of progress, completion, time and potential.
The common ground shared by all his works is a possibility for infinite extension, a perfect completeness on one level existing within the impossibility of completion of the larger structure. By reconfiguring individual parts and generating new relations he attempts to maintain the productivity and lifespan of the system. Time can be made to reverse and repeat endlessly. Everything can be taken apart, re-used and re-arranged. 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.
He uses a combination of digital and analog processes, often moving back and forth between the two. Open-source found digital models might be projected onto a wall to create a large-scale drawing in ribbon, which could then be subjected to physical forces, captured photographically and finally rendered as an animation. His exhibitions often combine tangible objects in a physical space with temporary online projects.
https://cargocollective.com/eksts
In 2022, George Eksts worked on a book, Reverses, published by CentreCentre in collaboration with V&A publishing. Reverses focuses on the stories revealed by the ‘wrong’ side of the image. Using 150 works on paper selected from the V&A’s archive, the book questions the flat view of an artwork, reframing paper as a three dimensional object.
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
2021
Five Things to See or Do, Broadway Gallery, Letchworth, Uk
2020
Time Smoking A Picture, Tintype, London
2019
Serious String, Mansions of the Future, Lincoln
2016
Casual Cursive, Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury
2015
Development Heaven, University of Hertfordshire Galleries
2014
Cause Unknown, Tintype, London
2013
Pitch, Roll, Yaw, Toulouse International Art Festival, Toulouse, France
2012 – 2013
Incredible Utility, Concrete, Hayward Gallery, London
Infinials, Tintype, London
Group Exhibitions
2019
Line/Extended, University of Hertfordshire 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
DRIVE bursary awarded by Animate Projects and the Jerwood Foundation, 2015
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
https://cargocollective.com/eksts