Starlie Geikie
Born 1975, Lismore, New South Wales.
Lives and works in Melbourne.
Starlie Geikie’s practice archives the past and ruminates on the future. Her work includes myriad references to utopian architecture, armour, cinema, feminism and images associated with the 1970s, generating both visual and historic dialogues. These references are often mediated by the artist’s reinterpretation of techniques such as quilt-making and stitching. Her work questions the implied passivity of craft practices and employs unexpected materials such as timber, woodstain, leather and rope —often in works of ambitious scale—to upend such associations. These materials and influences combine to emerge as forms for psychic defence against an internal or illusory battle. Geikie’s work represents boundaries and psychic barriers, alluding to powerful opposing forces such as isolation and connection, control and surrender.
Geikie completed a Master of Fine Arts at RMIT, Melbourne in 2002 and has exhibited in artist-run and commercial spaces nationally and internationally. She was a committee member of artist run initiative ClubsProjects inc from 2002-05. Selected solo exhibitions include Vélites, c3, Melbourne, 2014; Saracens, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, 2013; If I am not, put me there; and if I am, so keep me, Art Forum Berlin, Berlin, Germany, 2010; Low and Lone, Canberra Contemporary Art Spaces, Canberra, 2008; Open Studio, 18th Street Arts Centre, Los Angeles, USA, 2006; O Mother, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, 2002. Group exhibitions include Craftivism, touring regional Australia and includes Bega Valley Regional Museum, 2020, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, 2019 and Shepparton Art Museum, 2018; From Will to Form: 2018 TarraWarra Biennale, TarraWarra Museum, VIC; Starlie Geikie, Caves Gallery inc., Melbourne, 2018;
Fin, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, 2014; Melbourne Now, National Gallery Victoria, Melbourne, 2013; Future Visions, Divonne-les-Bains, France, 2013; A Secret Life of Plants, Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle, Western Australia, 2009; Reason and Rhyme, St Paul St Gallery, Auckland, 2011; Starlie Geikie and Lauren Berkowitz, Neon Parc, Melbourne, 2008; The Horror of Tradition, Andrew Shire Gallery, Los Angeles, 2008; and Primavera 2002: Young Australian Artists, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2002.
Geikie is featured in ‘Australiana to Zeitgeist’ published by Thames and Hudson, 2017. Her work is held in the collections of Ararat Regional Art Gallery, Artbank Australia, the Chartwell Collection, New Zealand and numerous private collections in Australia.