About the Artist and Exhibition:

George Akl is an emerging interdisciplinary public artist whose foundational practices include film, video, photography and socio-political grassroots activism. His work interrogates the cultural significance and materialities of cinema, which he then redistributes to effect public space. He first became interested in art as a young person in Fitzroy while witnessing the filming of Squizzy Taylor, a historic account of the life of a local Fitzroy legend and gangster. Since watching that filming; experiencing the oral history, place names, social climate, and politics of his neighbourhood get reconstructed into a film, George has been fascinated by the mesmerising effect of artificial light and cinema apparatus. A fascination that has informed his work to this day. Photography has strong foundations in George’s practice. He pushes the boundaries of the image to the brink, bending the aesthetic in, to materialise the social into the print. George has worked alongside artists such as Magdalena Jetalova and Fred Schepisi, he has exhibited in international art festivals like Construction In Process, and his art has supported significant change and social justice for environmental and human rights campaigns. He has been awarded a postgraduate creative scholarship from VCA, a significant arts grant from Creative Victoria and has been a participant in the Test Sites initiative by City Of Melbourne. Currently George has a solo installation exhibiting at the Climate Change Biennale in the Yarra Ranges.

generation. is a brief survey of the photography of George Akl as well as images from his residencies in Lorne. The exhibition consists of a selection of photographs that express the artist’s turbulent relationship to the landscape since the .com revolution. George boldly pushes the contextual and material process of digital photography to it’s boundaries, creating work that’s as tender as it is haunting. Full of texture and emotion, generation. is a story that reflects modern habitation’s chaotic obsession with the landscape

View generation. Catalogue here (please note, sales from this catalogue have now closed)

For available works by George Akl, please contact the artist directly