About
Georgia Saxelby is an interdisciplinary artist born in Sydney and based in Los Angeles. Through sculpture, moving image and performance, she constructs architectural imaginaries that produce feminist counter-mythologies and question the symbolic spaces in which Western identities and values are performed today. Her practice seeks to create slippages between reality and fiction in institutional architecture as a method of revealing, parodying and eroding patriarchal systems. From inventing new ornaments for old buildings to choreographing alternative rituals for Classical monuments, Saxelby aims to add to a lineage of radical spatial practices beginning in the 1960s that combine architecture and speculative fiction as methodologies of critical worldbuilding.
Saxelby has been awarded the 2023-24 Pittsburgh Glass Center Artist Residency, the 2024 and 2022 Australia Council for the Arts Individual Project Grant, 2021 Marten Bequest Scholarship, 2019 Samstag Scholarship, 2019 Australia Council of the Arts Career Development Grant and was a Finalist for the 2019 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship. Her work has exhibited internationally, including at the Hirshhorn Museum, The Phillips Collection, The American University Museum, The Smithsonian Arts & Industries Building and the Australian Embassy, all in Washington D.C.; Miller Institute for Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh; Artspace, Sydney; the 2022 Sydney Biennale Art After Dark program, Sydney; and The Samstag Museum for the 2020 Adelaide Biennale, Adelaide. In 2017-18, Saxelby was an Artist in Residence at the art and social impact incubator, Halcyon Arts Lab, Washington, DC, where she developed her largest work to date, To Future Women, a multi-museum intervention in Washington, DC in the aftermath of the 2017 Women’s March. It created a 20 year time capsule of letters written by the public to the next generation of women to historicize the march's anniversary and is currently occupying the Smithsonian Archives until 2037.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
October 4, 2024 - January 6, 2025 | smash the ceiling, floor, and walls; take the broken shards and blow them back at the Pittsburgh Glass Center Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA
RECENT EXHIBITIONS
March 16 - April 7, 2024 | Second Degree Vision, group exhibition at the Miller Institute of Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh, PA
10 September - 11 December, 2022 | Make-Believe with Devan Shimoyama | American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC
February 28 - September 18, 2020 | 2020 Adelaide//International at the Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia.
July 9 - October 31, 2019 | Lullaby, solo exhibition at the Embassy of Australia, Washington, DC
February 6 - March 2, 2019 | Nevertheless, She Persisted, Artereal Gallery, Sydney
November 15 - December 16, 2018 | NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship Exhibition, Artspace, Sydney
September 28 - October 3, 2018 | Freedman Foundation Traveling Scholarship Exhibition, UNSW Galleries, Sydney
June 1 - July 1, 2018 | To Future Women, IA&A at Hillyer gallery, Washington, DC
June 7 - 10, 2018 | To Future Women, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC
June 22 - 24, 2018 | To Future Women, By The People, Smithsonian Arts & Industries Building, Washington, DC
January 21 - February 20, 2018 | To Future Women, The Phillips Collection museum, Washington, DC
AWARDS
2024 | Australia Council for the Arts Individual Project Grant
2024 | The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO For Creative Inquiry Grant
2023-24 | Pittsburgh Glass Center Artist Residency
2022 | Australia Council for the Arts Individual Project Grant
2021 | Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship | Australia
2019 | Regina and Marlin Miller Master of Fine Arts Fellowship | Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA
2019 | Artist Residency Fellowship | Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, George Washington University, Washington DC
2018 | Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship | Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia
2018 | NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship (Finalist) | CreateNSW, Sydney
2018 | Australia Council for the Arts Career Development Grant | To Future Women, Washington DC
2018 | Visiting Scholar | Architecture, Culture, Spirituality Department, Catholic University of America, Washington DC
2017-18 | Artist Residency Fellowship | Halcyon Arts Lab, Halcyon House, Washington DC
2017 | Artist Residency Fellowship | The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, New York
2017 | Presenter | 9th International Architecture, Culture & Spirituality Symposium, Maine, USA
2017 | Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant, Australia
2017 | Copyright Fund Ignite Career Grant, Australia
2016 | Freedman Foundation Traveling Scholarship, Australia
2016 | 64th Blake Prize (Finalist) | The Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney
2015 | Artist Residency Fellowship | Culture at Work: Art & Science Research Institute, Sydney
2014 | The Chroma Prize for Innovation in Painting | Graduating Award, National Art School, Sydney
2014 | The Studio W Exhibition Prize for Overall Achievement | Graduating Award, National Art School, Sydney
2014 | University Prize for Art History & Theory | Graduating Award, National Art School, Sydney
2012 | Sydney Students Speak Finalist | Art History & Theory Pubic Speaking Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Works held in The Phillips Collection Archives and Smithsonian Archives, Washington DC and in private collections in New York, Washington DC, Sydney and Melbourne.