help artist george rose invent the future

 

What will the world look like in the future? One hundred, two hundred, even five hundred years from now where will we be? The possibilities are as endless as they are exhilarating…

Meet George Rose, a Canberra/Melbourne/Sydney based creative extraordinaire. Amongst other places, you’ve seen George’s work on our website banner and gracing the pages of the 2013 Lip Yearbook. Now, George is set to take this year’s This is Not Art festival (TiNA) in Newcastle by storm with her latest project, Possible Futures, Definitive Rad. However she needs a bit of help to make it happen! If you want to contribute to an exciting project, and feel the warm fuzzies whilst doing so, head on over to George’s Pozible page and spread the love.

Lip caught up with George to discuss what she has in store for TiNA.

Hi George, great to have you here on Lip, tell us a bit about yourself!
Hey there lip! Lovely to chat to you! Well where shall I start? I guess by day I am a freelancing artist/illustrator/mural painter and all-round-maker. I find that the bulk of my job is really to creatively solve problems and present them in a visually interesting way. I actually get bored if I don’t have any projects on the go, so I’m in a continual state of play, ‘making up’ projects and coming up with ideas which are just waiting for the right application. I freelance from a cozy little studio in Brunswick East but I tend to split my time between Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney roaming to where I am needed.

What exactly is Possible Futures, Definitive Rad and where did the idea come from?
Well Possible Futures, Definitive Rad will be life sized, interactive dioramas of what the future may or may not look like. They don’t exist yet but I am planning on creating them for installation at This is Not Art and Critical Animals this year.

The idea for the installation came from Critical Animals Festival’s theme, which is ‘Possible Futures’. Critical Animals is a research symposium that brings together creative’s from all warps of life to present and discuss ideas relating to innovative and emerging arts practices. I approached CA with the idea to create various backdrops in which they could host the symposium, and TiNA Festival loved the idea so much that they asked me to apply the life sized diorama’s to the whole festival.

What are you most looking forward to about the future?
Hmmm difficult question to answer…I’m looking forward to satisfaction and happiness. Not just for me but for everyone. Happiness, for me, is not an ‘end goal’ that I think we can all ‘reach’, but an idea and experience that everyone moves through every once in a while. I look forward to the pockets of joy that I experience.

I’m also a sucker for potential, which I guess you could argue that the future is ripe with. So If I can see potential in anything, it will excite and engage me. I’m looking forward to seeing some of my larger crazier art installations come to fruition.

What do you hope people will take from these installations?
The installations are really there to facilitate Critical Animals theme of ‘Possible Futures’. Personally I really want people to have fun with these works. I hope that people start to think about their futures and how they can engage with their lives in innovative and new ways.

Can we please have a sneak peek into what a Possible Future, Definitive Rad might contain?
Hover boards. It’s the one thing I can promise you. I don’t know how or why yet… but I do know it will happen.

Have you been involved with TiNA/Critical Animals before?
Not directly. I’ve been TO TiNA before, and friends with various different Critical Animal directors, I’ve even worked with the design firm behind some of TiNA Festival’s previous branding, but This is the first year that I have worked with the festival to produce something. It feels like it’s been a while coming and I’m excited about the project, it will be a lot of fun.

Out of all the great rewards you have available on Pozible, which ones have been the most popular, and which would you personally recommend?
I’d really like to make a short 30-second movie featuring a supporter of the project using the small scale diorama I made for the Pozible video. I’m hoping that at least one person goes for the BONUS surprise reward, which includes everything from the next reward down, PLUS the video of a possible future experience the supporter might possibly expect.

The most popular rewards have been the high-fives, hugs, or fist-bumps, and the ‘Future Safari Adventure’ Reward, where I lead a dress-up action adventure tour through the installed dioramas at TiNA. I’m pretty looking forward to hosting this.

Word on the street is that Creative Partnerships Australia will match what you raise dollar for dollar, that’s pretty exciting- tell us more!
Word on the street does not let you down! Yes, it’s pretty exciting. Creative Partnerships Australia have a campaign to help excellent projects happen by supporting them through a partnership crowd funding campaign. It means that whatever I can raise through crowd funding will be doubled, which of course means that the project can be bigger and better then otherwise expected!

Apart from the super-cool header of an amazing feminist website *cough* where else can people see your work?
All over the place! If you’re in Canberra you’re more likely to see it on the walls around down like at Bent Spoke Brewery or the Woden skate park, otherwise there’s heaps of places online which you might see my work. Best place to start is probably my website,  Facebook  or Instagram.

Anything else you’d like to share with Lip’s readers?
I’d love to share the installations with them, so I suspect they should come visit me in Newcastle on October!

You can donate to George’s campaign here.