Georgia on my Mind (The Facebook Project)

Exhibition Opening 6.00pm Friday 22 October Michael Koro Gallery, 110 Franklin Street, Melbourne

Georgia Smith (Missouri) is 66 years old. She is a hard core Christian and occasional racist. Her grandson Tyler has just had a liver transplant. He is OK.

In July 2010, personal details of 100 million Facebook users were collected and published online in a freely downloadable file. Frequent media reports warn us of the dangers of posting open information on Facebook - yet this doesn't deter hundreds of millions of users from divulging private information on the social networking site.

Focusing on one randomly selected 'Georgia Smith', the artist delves deeply into the most private areas of her life - what is freely available to her via her Facebook profiles and the information she is able to glean from this data through public records. Playing on the common activity of Facebook stalking, voyeurism, internet privacy and digital identity - this individuals life is exposed to the public within the gallery space.

Surrounding Georgia Smith (Missouri) are 500 individual profile pictures of Georgia Smith's from across the globe. Each profile is accompanied by a snippet of information from each individual's page, “I've got big boobs”, “Favourite book : Bible”, “Ibiza is culture, Ibiza is Life”. How much does this information tell us about these individuals or the on-screen personas they are attempting to portray? Displayed in an intimate space as one may display images of their friends and loved ones, the work is at once an expos'e of the artist's subjects and a massive self portrait of the artist herself.

Counteracting the exposure of her 500 Facebook "friends" Roxby Smith ustilises the Melbourne Propaganda Window to expose her own flawed digital identity in her attempt to create the perfect online profile.

www.georgieroxbysmith.ning.com