FRIENDS ACQUISITION: Georgia Tucker, `Conniveo´

‘Conniveo’ on display in the ‘Our Challenging Planet’ gallery at Thinktank

Georgia Tucker, `Conniveo´, 2020

Vinyl photographic image on Plexiglass

At the Friends Committee Meeting in December 2021, Emalee Beddoes-Davis, BMT’s Curator (Modern & Contemporary Art), presented an Acquisition Proposal for a work entitled ‘Conniveo’ by Georgia Tucker.

The Committee unanimously agreed to buy the work using a generous bequest left to the Friends in the Will of Miss Eileen Mary Staniforth. Emalee Beddoes-Davis, BMT’s Curator (Modern & Contemporary Art) describes the work and the role it will play within BMT’s collections.

‘Conniveo’ is a photographic still image on Plexiglass taken from Tucker’s Virtual Reality (VR) multi-media piece entitled ‘Conniveo 1. To blink, turn a blind eye or overlook’. The work creates an imagined, uninhabited island. Behind the façade of beauty it shows the consequences of human activity, exposing plastic pollution, oil spills, dead zones and ghost fishing. This print is a shot taken from the VR game engine as the viewer goes underneath the seabed looking up at the debris of human life that litters the sand.

Tucker says her work aims ‘to fully immerse the viewer in a new narrative and speculative future, forcing them to face a variety of environmental issues that our planet currently faces. The plastic pollution crisis is very real. However, the majority of people do not, and will not, experience the impact of this first-hand. VR allows me to take them to this place in a way which is individual to them and provides them a solitary experience to think about their future actions.’

Georgia Tucker is a Birmingham-based artist who founded Studio Tucker (www.georgiatucker.uk) after graduating from Birmingham City University in 2019. She has screened and exhibited her work internationally since 2019, making a number of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and physical installations in galleries and commercial spaces. Environmentalism is at the heart of all of her work and her practice is focused on environmental issues of sustainability, climate change and new technology.

‘Conniveo’ is currently on display in the ‘Our Changing Planet’ gallery at Thinktank which explores the long history of humanity’s influence on the planet. Tucker’s work focuses on the urgency of addressing the global climate change crisis for new and existing audiences. The work will be used to engage with visitors’ activities relating to combatting global warming and climate change, linking these global issues to the local community and to the West Midlands. n