“Gold Dust Woman” by Georgia Polkey was made using mixed media on panel and was created in 2016. This is a part of the Alumni Exhibition and Lecture Series.
Austin Cradic/The Lion's Roar

Georgia Polkey, Southeastern alumni and current adjunct professor for art, gave a lecture last week on her art career and journey through grad school.

The lecture was held at 12 p.m. last Thursday located in the university’s Contemporary Art Gallery as the first sequence of the Alumni Exhibition and Lecture series running from Oct. 22 to Nov. 10.

“I think I want my viewer to question what it’s like to be in a body,” said Polkey. “For me, a body is both inherently beautiful because we are contained by it but also terrifying because this is what you present to the world, and people see your body before they hear you speak.”

Polkey discussed bodies a lot in her pieces. As she showed slides throughout her career, she began to move more towards the abstract representation of the body through various shapes and colors that represent bodily functions. She said that she likes to bring in her gender and sexuality into her art. With that notion, she focuses a lot on bodily functions and how women can be “empowered through their own bodily functions.”

“I feel uncomfortable by the notion that people are judging me by outward appearance of who I am and not the inward of what is sort of happening here,” said Polkey. “We all have the same organs, they are all internally the same.”

Polkey graduated in 2012 with a degree in art and a concentration in painting and drawing before it was split into two separate categories. After her undergrad, she went to University of Connecticut for her Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studio Arts. While at UConn’s graduate school, she had all of her art classes in a former mental health asylum, which she felt was appropriate because it allowed her to “embrace her own insanity.” This experience was later shown in her other art like the installation she currently has up in CAG on campus where she expresses body fluids with an array of colors.

“Yellow is one of the colors they put in asylums to make people more happy but then they realized with more study that it was one of those things making them worse,” said Polkey. “I kind of like that history of these colors being something that people would normally find beautiful, these pinks, purples, greens and yellows and were to take it into a different context would be seen in a different light.”

The audience was also very engaged with the talk asking many questions at the end of the lecture. 

“I felt very engaged with this lecture because most of it was all about identity, which is something I’ve always questioned my entire life,” said Brooke Lawson, a freshmen art major with a concentration in new media and animation. “I’ve always questioned my identity as a girl because of the whole thing about femininity and being a stereotypical girly girl. Yes I like the color pink, but I also like Nintendo and stuff like that.”

Polkey’s installation will stay up in the Gallery until Nov. 10. The gallery is open Mondays through Thursdays from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., extended until 8 p.m. on Wednesdays and 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Fridays.

 

This artwork is a part of the Alumni Exhibition and Lecture Series.
Austin Cradic/The Lion's Roar