George Egerton-Warburton

13 November - 3 December 2010

For his first solo exhibition in Perth, George Egerton-Warburton will be presenting an installation that will form the framework for a narrative that he will deliver each day in the gallery.

The installation is based on a Piazza that Egerton-Warburton recalls visiting in Italy in 2008. Surrounding a faux-baroque fountain in the centre of the gallery will be a coffee table and benches, with paintings adorning the walls according to the exterior frescoes of the buildings in the piazza.

The scene evokes a sense of casually encouraged serendipity as the viewers enter the gallery which now resembles the decorated gizzards of an antique European romantic film, or an amateur theatre production. Patrons and flâneurs alike are invited to slump around and be served coffee by Egerton-Warburton at a specific time each day, before he joins them around the coffee table and delivers a narrative.

With the aid of the objects in the gallery, the spoken word delivered will reflect the format of the Piazza, as an intersection for conflicting ideas and styles. As with the beat poets, rappers, and bush ballads he has heard spun, the narrative will be softly abstracted, beginning with the everyday, and speckled with references to the phenomenon of "Ley lines", illicit laboratory analogies, personal memories, fleeting blog posts, Priapus, movements and contrasting analytic evaluations of his generation, chicken mustering, the eternal rise of fall of lives and nations, and recent trips to different nations including, Italy, Principality of Hutt River, and Egerton-Warburton's own Bongolia. The monologue will constitute both a new and revised investigation into the philosophical notion of "the good life" and "autonomy".

George Egerton-Warburton is an emerging Artist based in Perth. His practice is process and narrative driven, and has been described as existing in the space between work ethic and the absurd. He has recently exhibited work in the 2010 Next Wave festival in Melbourne, Via Farini in Milan, PICA, Fremantle Art Centre, as well as art awards and artist run spaces in Sydney and Tasmania.