Cover image of the review
George Egerton-Warburton, *Truffle hunting (cortical)*, 2017, digital print, dibond, dog poo, artist frame, 47.6 x 62.9 x 3.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne.

George Egerton-Warburton, also known as ,


3 Aug 2019
Heide Museum of Modern Art 29 Jun - 20 Oct 2019

Like the rusty machinery that squeaks and bumps and scrapes and moans in a most wonky fashion, the coherence of George Egerton-Warburton's installation at Heide Museum of Modern Art teeters on the brink of collapse. The exhibition is comprised of a discordant array of styles, media and sensibility, willingly courting bewilderment. This is why the artist was so annoyed not to be able to use the punctuation mark , as the exhibition's official title. (The Museum purportedly explained that , would be too confusing for audiences and the media, which, the artist lamented, would have been precisely the point.)

Lining the walls of Heide's small Project Gallery is a series of photographic stills from a documentary about truffle-hunting pigs digitally printed on silver Dibond backing panels. Set a few centimetres back in artist-made box frames, the images are prefaced by moulding dog turds, which sit on the internal ledges of the frames. This series is interrupted by two large, colourful—and very beautiful—abstract paintings that allude to Heide's manicured garden beds, and a large, glossy “X” painting that references the work of Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley, whose survey Temptation to Co-exist was concurrently on display in the neighbouring galleries until recently.

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