Geo Wyeth (US, based between Rotterdam/Amsterdam, NL, and New York City) works with music, performance, installation, and video. Presented at New Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, TENT (Rotterdam), Showroom MAMA (Rotterdam), MoMA PS1 (Greater New York 2016), LA MoCA, New York Live Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Boston ICA, Kate Werble Gallery, La MaMa Theatre, Human Resources, The Pyramid Club, and Joe’s Pub. They were in residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten for the years 2015-2016 in Amsterdam.
In the work, there is a gap between the dreams and the realities of Wyeth’s characters. They are mostly loners or strangers, hovering in this space, devoted to their position but hoping that somehow that they can get out of it. They take a good deal of inspiration from the blues, a quotidian lamentation of the loner, and more recently 11th century Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum, where the Soul longs to leave the Body. In their work, music and song are portals, openings, and carriers of mood. All materials generated are an extension of that mood.
Wyeth’s current project features an imaginary civil servant known as the Muck Raker from the city agency the Muck Studies Department (2018). Referencing an 1890s American term for a certain brand of anti-corruption investigative journalism, the figure roams through the low lying waters of Holland and the USA, literally raking the muck at the bottom to try and make the bubbles come up to the surface, releasing methane into the air, with a desire for everyone to “smell it.” “The Muck Raker is interested in the ethical questions around “releasing” truth, or evidence, and precipitating action based on troubling ideas of what is considered “common” or “good. The Muck Raker is a figure primed for the Louisiana landscape. “Wyeth wants to use their desire and principles as a guide in the research and activities during the residency months.”