ART WORKS 1: LUCA GEORGE
Isobel Neviazsky in conversation with Luca George
ART WORKS is a series of interviews conducted by Isobel Neviazsky, the Artists have some connection to an ongoing interrogation of WORKWORKS.
For clarity throughout the interview I will refer to the day job as work with a lowercase and Work in regards to artwork with uppercase
Luca George, you are an artist. I have known you since at least your degree show in 2013. I would describe you as a primarily a performance artist, sometimes performing to camera, or through Instagram and a sculptor sometimes creating Late Stage Capitalism Arte Povera (or Austerity dell’arte <term coined by Gary Zhexi Zhang>) sculptures made from Amazon delivery boxes or plastic bottles. Your work is playful and often made in dialogue with art history, sometimes poking fun at capital-A art and the institutions.
IN: Luca, can you tell me about your day job (s)?
LG: I do a few different things. I’ll lead with my part time work as an Associate Lecturer at an Art School in London, because I love it. This teaching work came from being invited to Art Schools around the UK and Europe as a visiting artist, doing artist talks and workshops, all of which were a result of lecturers and students seeing my work in the real world or on Instagram and contacting me directly. I prepared for all of these opportunities as if I was auditioning for The X Factor, I gave them everything I’ve got, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
I also work as a freelance art handler/technician/art fabricator and have done for the past 10+ years, this is what I spend most of my time doing. This work has kept my head above water and allowed me to pay rent and have a studio in London. As you know, bending time to make art without having a disposable income requires a flexible and driven set of skills comparable to an Olympic gymnast, so here’s a gold medal for me, and for you!
Before all of this I spent many years working in nightclubs, pubs, on building sites, as a painter and decorator, in a fish and chip shop, as a cleaner, and as a professional football player. The last one isn’t true but there’s still time. Impossible is nothing.
IN: I thought of you in relation to WORKWORKS mainly in regards to your period working as an art handler, i think this stands out to me in my memory as I was also working in the Art Industrial Complex at a similar time. Can you tell me about your work Building Walls When I Should Be Building Bridges?
LG: it’s a collection of photos of walls I have built for art galleries and institutions over the years. I had the idea to upload them after taking a photo of a wall I was building at the Royal Academy for their students’ degree show and thinking to myself, I must have loads of photos like this, which it turned out I did.
Despite being sombrely aware that I am a well lubricated cog in the machine of the ‘Art Industrial Complex’, I’m always searching for glimpses of light and humour within its mechanisms, these photos presented one of those moments to me. There’s a certain Sisyphean humour that I like in the erection of stud walls for displaying art, as they often come down as quickly as they go up...
Anyway, all that is to say, I thought uploading a collection of photos of walls onto Instagram titled ‘Building Walls When I Should Be Building Bridges’ and tagging the location as ‘The Art World’, might get me through that specific work day, and it did!
IN:There’s beauty in turning the Banal into a Readymade, turning one’s day job into a durational performance, but as well, this work can inform the Work
You make some exquisite minimalist sculptures (see pictured) which utilise materials that you use in your work as an art handler / fabricator - I think these feel as if they came to you almost in a day dream whilst on the job. These feel like the synthesis of the durational performance as Cog and The Artist (Luca George the Sculptor)
LG: Thank you
IN: I’d like to talk about Luca’s Gallery and Luca’s Art School, the art school feels like a response to your work as a lecturer, but I see a thread running from the gallery to the art school chronologically. Would you introduce these projects?
LG: Alright, so I think I made some kind of Faustian bargain with social media - or specifically Instagram - about ten years ago, which involved me using it to elevate my practice, so all the work I have produced since, needs to be viewed with that (deal with the devil) in mind.
Both Luca’s Gallery and Luca’s Art School are an attempt to wriggle myself out of this bargain. I’ll try to explain: I don’t do performances as much as I used to, but when I did, I felt as though I could suck the anxiety out of the room and essentially harness it for however long I would be performing. Maybe I’m projecting, but I’ve always felt as though the overriding emotion within art spaces is anxiety, and I wanted to rid the space of it and provide everyone with some light relief by focusing their attention on…. Me!
These performances would usually involve me climbing up somewhere high, often within the gallery or in a public space and reciting a long monologue, then I’d start singing and attempt to weave some kind of lyrical humour into it. At first I’d just make it all up as I went along, and sometimes I’d get quite drunk before I did them. But then later I started to write a script in preparation for a performance. I’d recite it to myself again and again, fretting and worrying, literally walking around in circles in the weeks leading up to the performance full of dread, which ultimately, never felt worth it.
Then I did one which involved me wearing an articulated horse/centaur costume that i’d made from PVC pipes that moved with me as I walked around, it was called ‘The Centaur of Attention’, during the performance I kept saying, “I am the Centaur of your attention!”. I got everyone to get their phones out and video me, then asked them all to upload their videos to their Instagram stories, tag me and write something like ‘Wow, I’ve just been to the best performance I’ve ever seen’ so I could reshare their stories. I woke up the next day, re-shared the stories and then thought to myself, that’s probably enough now, it was clear that this way of working had run its course. But the one thing I didn’t want to stop was my continued pursuit to relieve people of the anxiety they felt when they encountered and experienced art. That’s when I started to think about opening my own art gallery.
It’s often said that the loneliest place you can be is in a room full of people, but I’d argue that room becomes even lonelier if it’s full of people attending something called a private view. So I decided that my gallery would be so small you couldn’t even get inside it.
While working as an art handler for a commercial gallery I went for a walk on my lunch break and noticed a big white vacant building on New Bond Street in Central London. I took the keys for my flat out of my pocket and photographed them in my open hand in front of the building. Then uploaded this photo onto Instagram with the 🔑 emoji and an exclamation mark. Following this I received several invitations to work with other galleries and curators who were curious if they could also use the building. When it was revealed in my next Instagram post that I had instead made a metre high architectural model of the building that would house my gallery, they were less keen to work with me.
The gallery has been running for over three years now, and has hosted an array of different solo and duo exhibitions. Although it has grown physically there has never been any intention of it becoming an ‘actual’ gallery, I’ve always enjoyed the idea that it is a pretend gallery, and as long as it’s got my name on it, it’ll stay that way.
Luca’s Art School is currently in its inaugural year having opened on 1st September 2025. A call out was made on Instagram to anyone who was interested in receiving a free studio space and free tuition in the summer of 2025, almost 100 students enrolled and have all received a 14cm x squared studio space in the post with the instruction to ‘Make the most of this time and space’ and that ‘I’ll be in touch in May’. They have until 1st of June 2026 to come up with their degree show, which will take place at an unconfirmed destination.
—
Thank you to The Artist Luca George for his generosity and time for this interview, and good luck to the soon to be Alumni from the inaugural body of Luca’s Art School