“When I don’t make art, I feel like I am losing myself” - says Georgia Quilty Kent
My Proudest Moment: a conversation with multi-disciplined artist Georgia Quilty Kent.
Georgia Quilty Kent is a contemporary multi-discipline fine artist who explores and challenges the ideas behind religion, ritual, feminism, sexuality, and folklore. We spent an afternoon sitting in her caravan on her Traveller site in Bristol talking about what inspires her, what life experiences have helped her become the artist she is today and what her proudest moments have been in her career.
Her work is moving, dark and quite controversial, but there can also be a chime of comedy and a splash of sexuality meaning that you never know which side to Georgia Quilty Kent’s art you may get when looking at her work. “My art has always been inspired by the darkness in people, the underbelly, and otherworldly, I love to dive deeper into the unknown that's why religion is seen in my work quite often,” says Georgia Quilty Kent. Her art is prolific and looking through her living space and studio you can tell that she is constantly making artwork, whether it be sketching, moulding or sewing, her work is multi-disciplined and multidimensional.
“Being an artist is something that I could not do. It is a way for me to express myself, it’s a way for my emotions to come out and sometimes I am not even aware of how my emotions a transcending through my work, it will only be after I have stopped and taken myself away from the work am I am able to see what I am processing. It’s like it’s something that lives in me that I can't control, when I don’t make art, I feel like I am losing myself,” say’s Georgia Quilty Kent.
We talked about how being a Traveller and living in a vehicle has its plus sides and its downsides. Georgia Quilty Kent explains, “As a Traveller and having a nomadic lifestyle around the UK and Europe, living in such different environments and landscapes has led me to create artworks on found objects, such as glass table tops, a bathroom cabinet, broken picture frames, and leather jackets. There have been moments in my life when I haven’t been able to afford to buy materials or canvases and using found objects has been a great alternative to the “normal” way of making such as canvas or paper. I really like that I will make art regardless of financial and material restrictions, and I think that using found objects has given my work more depth and makes it unusual to the viewer.”
Georgia first accepted her creative identity ten years ago when she moved her work from her small living space of a caravan into a studio. “Once I moved into a studio and out of a caravan, I really took myself more seriously as an artist before I made this move, I saw my "work" as an obsessive hobby of sorts. It was life-changing creatively moving into a proper space. I was able to start working at a much bigger scale, living in vehicles had made my work quite restricted”. This move allowed Georgia to take the brush from paper and start thinking in large-scale and sculpture.
“Painting and illustration will always be my most comfortable way of releasing my creative vision, but I have found a real love for sculpture, and prop making. When I started working in film and Television over Covid- 19 I became so excited to learn how to use new materials like prosthetics,” say’s Georgia Quilty Kent
One of the projects she worked on over lockdown was the ‘Mary Shelley's House of Frankenstein’ an immersive horror museum in Bath which has built-in escape rooms and lots of weird and wonderful artefacts made by herself. “I am sure there will be lots of other proud moments to come for my future as an artist as my practice is constantly changing and developing into new projects, but for now my proudest creative moment has been working on The House of Frankenstein’, it was a fantastic opportunity and great fun making huge prosthetic pig heads and weird horror props. I love the fact the public can come and experience all the strange things I made.”
My day spent with Georgia was thrilling, she has such an accomplished collection of work from paintings, handmade hats, huge pig heads and lots of sketchbooks her work is complex, bold and boundless, I look forward to seeing her work in more galleries in the future.
Faye Freeman for TT Vision, Travellers’ Times
Photos by Faye Freeman