Georgina Starr

Yesterday, 2010

33 rpm vinyl on turntable, turntable, amplification system, variable dimensions, variable duration.

Work presented as part of the exhibition Echos d'une collection - Works by Frac Franche-Comté

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The recording dates back to 1991, when Georgina Starr was still a student, working mainly in sculpture. In 2010, during the exhibition I am a record and I am the medium, at the art center Le Confort moderne in Poitiers, she recounts how, alone at school, she began whistling "Yesterday" by The Beatles in the corridors in search of inspiration, and found the sound beautiful in this large, empty space. She wanted others to hear it, so she recorded it and placed speakers around the school connected to the cassette player in her locker. The next day, at the end of the day, everyone was whistling the tune without having understood where it was coming from.

The recording is part of the On The Record collection, which, to coincide with the exhibition at Le Confort moderne in 2010, brings together what Georgina Starr has recorded (in audio) since she began hearing voices at the age of 5. The range of this archive covers the sound of a damaged radiator she thought was talking to her, reconstructions of secretly recorded conversations, paranormal telephony, whistling sounds, love letters with heavy metal percussion... over 80 vinyl records with sleeves mostly painted and designed by her. The cover of Yesterday is a simple photograph of the cassette on which Georgina Starr recorded her whistling.

The collection is accompanied by a book published by Le Confort moderne in which the artist recounts and explains the context of each recording. The installation will be included in the exhibition devoted to Georgina Starr by the Frac Franche-Comté in 2017.

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Georgina Starr

Born in 1968 in Leeds (UK)

Lives and works in London

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Georgina Starr studied at the Jacob Kramer School of Art (Middlesex Polytechnic), the Slade School of Art and the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam.

She is considered to belong to the second wave of Young British Artists, a generation that emerged on the contemporary scene in the late 1980s, including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

Her face, and above all her voice, are the focus of attention, transforming as she performs. Thus, in 1995, Visit to a Small Planet, an installation of five videos produced for the Kunsthalle Zurich, took up, between fascination and parody, the motifs of the film of the same name (starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Marin) which had impressed her as a child. The following year, she exhibited Hypnodreamdruff at the Tate Modern, a complex, multi-character video installation as much a dream as a sitcom.

In 2017, the Frac Franche-Comté organized the artist's first major exhibition in France, mixing historic works with previously unseen productions. The title, Hello. Come here. I want you, refers both to Thomas Edison's first telephone "Hello" and to the words of the man considered to be the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Bell, who in 1876 succeeded in transmitting a human voice at a distance with the message "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you". The famous competition between the two men foreshadows the media and communications society we live in today. Georgina Starr's works do not stop at this societal critique, however. They involve a quest - and an invitation - to go beyond appearances.

In 2020, Georgina Starr released her most substantial film to date, Quarantaine (43'). It follows two students from a clandestine house of education through a series of initiatory ordeals, steeped in esotericism. The film is followed in 2021 by a filmed lecture by the artist, The Voices of Quarantaine (Part 1), which explores the film's inspirations, from Saint Ursula to Jacques Rivette.