Provoking emotions by using immersive and sensorial installations is central to my art. My work aims to explore the intangible contradictions that linger underneath our long-established beliefs. Questioning the way we relate to reality, I turn statues and symbols upside down, overlap sounds and languages, and utilize surveillance cameras to enable self-perception. I have created installations that challenge our perceptions in the way we see, hear, and express fear, and I am particularly interested in seeing how those installations affect the behaviour and movement of people responding to my work.
In A Lump in the Throat (2022) for example, the piece Che farò senza Euridice is sung in four languages but performed simultaneously, two by two. The piece is about 40 percent identical in all languages and this creates an initial impression that the installation is a traditional work of music; but when the listeners come closer to the loudspeakers they realize that the song is performed in unison in two languages, and this creates a change of perception and understanding, and each listener reacts in different ways. Most of them start to wonder around the space. It was as if they were physically expressing an emotional experience to baroque architecture, their appreciation of the work being reinforced by movement. Then, sometimes, after a phase of exploration, the movement stopped, and finally another phase of immobility followed. I call this final moment the Palladio Phase because the appreciation of the work came from a position of stillness.
The experience of seeing visitors’ reaction to my sound installation strongly affected – and changed -- my conception of installation art and inspired the creation of the video installation A Room of One’s Own, on show this October at the Bloomsbury Festival in London. Entering the room, the visitors will see four screens set on four different walls. To appreciate the work the viewers are forced to move and turn around, to try to catch the four screens at once, a task impossible to achieve. Maybe they will stay still, accepting the limitation of their peripheral vision, or perhaps they will grasp scenes presented on the four screens in a merely conceptual way, or… none of the above. Ultimately there is no way to tell in advance, we must wait and see.
Urso, a British-European citizen, moved from Sicily to London for a Post Graduate Diploma in Multimedia at Birkbeck College and a MA in Video at Middlesex University.
His work has been exhibited in London, including Central Saint Martins, Exposed Arts Projects, and St John on Bethnal Green, and lately Myymälä2 in Helsinki,
and Casa Seminario in Mexico City.
Not the End of Us is a publication about the experience of Alter Us collective during the lockdown. It includes reviews by Lesley Butler & Giuseppe Mario Urso, with works by Lorenzo Belenguer, Tere Chad, Nathalie Mei, Teresa Paiva, Christopher Pearson, Ana Luiza Rodriguez, and GM Urso.
14 October - 22 October 2023 - Solo Exhibition - St Pancras New Church, London (Bloomsbury Festival 2023)
16 October - 23 October 2022 - Solo Exhibition - St George's Bloomsbury, London (Bloomsbury Festival 2022)
19 May 2022 - Bookery Gallerie, London
10 January - 5 February 2022 - Casa Seminario 12, Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México
1 October - 31 October 2021 - Myymälä2, Uudenmaankatu 23 F, Helsinki, Finland
1 July - 31 July 2021 - St John on Bethnal Green, London
13 November 2020, online – Support Bubble a short film produced during the first lockdown - together but ‘not together’ - with the Argentinian artist César Baracca
11 September - 13 September 2020 - Clerkenworks, 40 Bowling Green Lane, Farringdon, London
26 September - 11 November 2019 - Window 3 at Central Saint Martins (CSM), University of the Arts London (UAL)
11 September - 22 October 2019 - Exposed Arts Projects , 4-6 Drayson Mews, Kensington, London
15 June 2019 - 12 July 2019 - The Old Baths, 80 Eastway, London
26 May - 10 June 2019 - Camberwell College of Arts, London
20 July 2021 - Panellists: César Baracca, Nathalie Mei, Ana Luiza Rodriguez, Giuseppe Mario Urso. Moderator: Tere Chad - online
25 February 2021 - Panellists: Paul Hindle, Ludmila Sigismondo, Parizad Nobakhr, Giuseppe Mario Urso. Moderators: Tere Chad & Nathalie Mei - online
11 November 2019 - Panellists: Domenica Landin & Giuseppe Mario Urso. Moderator: Tere Chad - Latin American House - London
2003 - 2004 Postgraduate Diploma Digital Media, Birkbeck, University of London
1997 - 1998 MA Video, Middlesex University, London
1995 - 1996 Video Production, Morley College, London
1987 - 1991 Economia e Commercio, Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy
R. Richards, Grow, Bloomsbury Festival Catalogue, London, 2023, p 9.
L. Butler & G.M. Urso, Not the End of Us, Alter Us Publication, London, 2022.
R. Richards, Breathe, Bloomsbury Festival Catalogue, London, 2022, p 11.
T. Chad, Neo Norte 3.0 Catalogue, Myymälä2, Helsinki, 2021, pp 3-22-23-37.
G.M. Urso, A short narrative with three works from In My Dreams, a-n blog, London, 2021.
T. Chad, Neo Norte 2.0 Catalogue, Exposed Arts Projects, London, 2019.
Copyright © GM Urso 2022