Georgina Gratrix was born in 1982 in Mexico City, Mexico. Selected group exhibitions include From Pierneef to Gugulective at the South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 2010 and ¡ALPTRAUM!, which travelled to Washington D.C. London, Berlin, Los Angeles and Cape Town in 2011. Georgina was included in the exhibition The Beautyful Ones, curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg at Galerie Judin in Berlin in 2013. Later that year Die Tankstelle, Judin’s second galley, presented Gratrix’s solo exhibition The Berlin Paintings, an exhibition of the artist’s most recent paintings created during her stay in Berlin.

Flowers for I.G. shows the artist in a rare moment of tenderness. This is Geogina’s first editioned print produced with printmaker Sara-Aimee Verity of Warren Editions in Cape Town. Remarkably for a silkscreen, Verity has succeeded in preserving the particular detail of the artist's gestural marks made predominantly in lithographic crayon.

In keeping with Georgina’s love of fluorescent colours, decorative indulgence, fun and gesticulating lines, Flowers for I.G. is also a marked departure from her characteristically excessive application of oil paint that usually communicates her interest in youth psyche, loathing, deformation and cosmetic obsession. Georgina is an astute cultural commentator. Part mocking, part criticism, part play, she continually offers an inverted visual take on the world, instilled with her own youthful energy and personal experience.

 

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

“I am interested in puppies, parrots, beauty queens, Bacon, Dumas, Degas, Amor Vittone, Chanel handbags, Robert Pattinson, Justin Bieber, Muafangejo and palm trees. I paint from doodles, magazine clippings and internet cullings. The paintings never look anything like the source material. All these pretty things become a little uglier. They become paintings.”