Sutton Gallery is thrilled to present I knew that I was watching television, a solo exhibition by Georgina Cue. For this exhibition, Cue has created an openly constructed set that renders the compositional logic of a two-dimensional collage in three-dimensional form. Drawing together Cartesian graphics, Renaissance architectural schematics and the geometric figuration of Bauhaus theatre, Cue has produced a perspectivally distorted environment that oscillates between constructed image and activated stage.
Fabricated from makeshift materials such as corflute, foam board and tape, the set serves as a backdrop for neo-Classical props, cuboid figures and gridded systems that are presented as fragmentary and fallible constructions. Wooden frames and provisional fixings are deliberately left exposed, revealing the physical construction involved in the creation of this environment. The viewer becomes implicated in this immersive mise-en-scène that refuses spatial coherence. Instead, the work foregrounds the disjuncture between pictorial devices predicated on rigid, mathematical schemas—grids, vanishing points, orthogonals—and embodied perception.
The work engages with canonical representational systems that have historically sought to rationalise space and the body through geometric abstraction and perspectival order. Cue’s material intervention is a means of re-presenting pictorial contrivances as intentionally flawed constructions rather than as realistic representations. I knew that I was watching television unravels the logic of perspectival space, and in doing so aims to forward rational modalities of seeing as contingent and absurd.
Georgina Cue creates staged spatial backdrops for performance-based video, photography and sculptural assemblage. Her practice uses failure, play, and absurdity to examine the material limitations of representational strategies employed within canonical cinema and historical art movements. Through this approach, her work explores the constructed nature and framing conditions of pictorial space and moving images.
Georgina Cue (b. 1987) lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne. She received a BFA (honours) from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2011, University of Melbourne, where she is currently a lecturer. Her work has been exhibited at significant galleries and institutions, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong; Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Gertrude Contemporary Art Gallery; Melbourne, National Art School Gallery, Sydney; QUT Art Museum, Brisbane; UNSW Art & Design, COFA, Sydney; McClelland Gallery, Victoria; and Sullivan + Strumpf, Singapore. Cue’s work can be found in notable public collections across Australia, such as the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Artbank, Sydney, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo among others.
She has been the recipient of several grants and awards including the Australia Coucil Career Development Grant (2018), the NAVA Australian Artist Grant (2016), the Australia Council New Work Grant (2015), the Australia Council JUMP National Mentorship Program (2013), the Nava Sainsbury Sculpture Grant (2013), the Australia Council Artstart Grant (2012), the NAVA Friedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship (2012), the Dowd Foundation Scholarship (2008) and the Myer Foundation Award (2008). She has undertaken several prestigious residencies including the Gertrude Contemporary Studio Residency from 2018 to 2020.
Installation view
Georgina Cue
I knew that I was watching television, 2025
Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
