Georgina Cue is an artist and teacher who has been thinking deeply about history, set design, and photography. ‘I knew that I was watching television’ showcases those interests in a cinematic-like set that nods to several key moments in Western art history, such as Renaissance architectural drawing, Bauhaus theatre design, and Cartesian coordinates.

 

Cartesian coordinates, named after René Descartes, you may remember him for his idea “I think, therefore I am”, revolutionised mathematics in the 17th Century. Descartes acknowledged that thinking of numbers on a linear plane, one moves to two, two moves to three, is insufficient when trying to describe the actual world we experience, which is obviously not two-dimensional, but three. This led to the articulation of concepts like geometry and calculus, which extend beyond the linear into multidimensional thinking.

 

Cue suggests here that art, similarly, is not just a linear progression from a painting of a horse on a wall to detailed watercolours that resemble real life. From Hans Holbein the Younger’s clever skull effects, to Cocteau’s photography and cinema, or even a tableau of a woman lying on her back with a gas lamp. Cue lays bare and plays with a fascination for this long history of Western Art, leaving references for the audience to pick through.

 

The references here though are not merely pieces to be assembled like a puzzle; rather, they are intended as a launch pad to reflect on how we arrived at the point in this cosmic grid where a work like what you are seeing can be made in the first place…. An open cube that is fallible, disposable, and temporary are much like props from a television set. The “hand of the artist” is revealed to break the illusion of three-dimensional space or to demystify canonical references.

 

The title "I knew that I was watching television" nods to this concept. Television is designed to give the illusion that you’re part of what’s happening, but if you saw how the set was built - thinly, cheaply, out of cardboard - you’d break the “fourth wall.” You’d know you were watching television.

 

This installation isn't intended to be just another link in the chain of Western Art History, it’s an invitation to think of that culture as something better viewed in more than three dimensions, something you can see from the front, consider the history of, and to peek behind the curtain to see how it was made.