FAIR GAME [RUN LIKE A GIRL]

4 July - 21 August 2016

Curated by Claire Anna Watson

Georgie Roxby Smith

Grand Theft Auto is populated by stereotyped female bots, who – despite some initial attitude - screech and ‘run like a girl’ when bumped or touched by their male counterparts. These animations are designed by the game makers to be fleeting and momentary, a direct response to a single action of the player.

What happens if the player refuses to take no for an answer and pushes this intended moment to its maximum - is there an end point?

In Fair Game the player becomes the hunter, the bots the hunted as the artist stalks the women to their deaths in a live endurance performance.

Georgie Roxby Smith works across a range of disciplines exploring new pathways between virtual and physical worlds. Employing a variety of tools - including 3D graphics, live performance, shared virtual and gaming spaces, installation and projection - these works explore the increasingly blurred border between identity, materiality, reality, virtuality and fantasy in contemporary culture. In 2010 Georgie was selected for The Watermill Center Spring Residency Program, NY. In 2011 Georgie completed her MFA at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. Since 2012 Georgie has been focusing on gender representation and violence in video games, particularly that directed towards women on screen and in online communities.

Georgie has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally including Art in Odd Places, New York, Prospectives International Festival of Digital Art Nevada, Game Art Festival at Hammer Museum Los Angeles, Gamerz Festival (FR), Festival Miden (GR) and Generation i.2 - Aesthetics of the Digital in the 21st Century at Edith Russ Huas for Media Art (DE). Other highlights include curating and showing in NOW13:New Media Art Now, Substation Contemporary Art Prize and Self Help at Rawson Projects  Brooklyn. Most recently, Georgie showed at Game Video/Art: A Survey at 21st Triennale in Milan, Strafsachen Galerie in Austria , QUT Art Museum and Data Flow: Digital Influence at Town Hall Gallery in Melbourne.

Awards and grants include the Australia Council of the Arts New Work, Artstart, Nellie Castan Award, Australian Postgraduate Award, Ian Potter Cultural Trust, Dame Joan Sutherland Fund and the Eldon and Anne Foote Trust Travel Grant.

GUEST CURATOR
Claire Anna Watson

GTAV Online Intervention (longshot machinima) 2016 | 13:57 (continuous loop)

Image courtesy of the artist