Skittles, 2025
Lobster traps requisitioned from lobster death camp, wool rug, five Uniqlo garments, wood chipper, gas, found furniture, pine, denim, check book, vitamin B, vitamin C, acetaminophen, Picabia book, antique wooden sailor figurine, wallet, pomegranates, text on paper
Dimensions variable
George Egerton-Warburton’s installation Skittles is a combination of readymades that engage fundamental concerns 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 of authority. Accompanied by an anonymous rambling text, it speaks with the speed of conspiracy and crisis about what 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 and tone. 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); TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Australia (2021); and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth, Australia (2021).