I have been considering the meaning of a "collect call": especially during these distinct times, to me it shouts "a call out and a call in," leaning into something new and drastic. A call to self, a call to others, to tie the threads together in an unravelling weave of chaos, tangled in old ways of being. A call to move, a call to less, a call to distance, a call to caress. A push forward to collective well-being. A shared accountability. The feeling of the cost of your call home covered by your mum.

I began to think of ways of calling and communicating and my mind drifted to the symbolic rainbow symbol that has been placed in windows as a sign of hope all over the world and how it speaks to solidarity in the public and private landscape. The curved arched forms made me think of the body of Nut, an Egyptian goddess who I regularly use as a symbol in my work, who holds the stars of the dead in her belly, swallows the sun and gives birth to the moon and vice versa, each day and night. She is the goddess of order and chaos, of death and fertility, she is the fine line between them, and she highlights the fine connection of extreme opposites and states.

I started to recreate her in all the colours and forms, cut out from my father’s old lighting gels, creating sheltered layers of all the colours of the rainbow, a symbol of society stretching and adapting for one another and feeling the hierarchy and injustice of politics and nature.

Funnily enough the formation began to look like the universal sign for wifi, which seems quite appropriate during this over-connected period. Our holy wifi, connector of all things. This is a call to collective feeling, leaning, stretching and adapting from the knowledge gained during these world-altering times.
—Greer Pester

Greer Pester was born in 1988 in Glasgow, Scotland. She graduated with a degree in Painting and Sculpture from Edinburgh College Of Art in 2010. She has been living and working between the UK and Mexico for the past 4 years, teaching art in Mexico City and Glasgow. She currently lives and works in Scotland.

Greer's work explores human sensuality and vulnerability with her patchwork of collage, drawing, painting, and sculpture. Ranging from detailed linear graphic work to bold bright expansive cut out forms. Her colourful palette embodies the exotic and erotic, taking enrichment from many years living and working in Mexico and through cultural exchanges and residencies in Europe, Africa and the US.

Her work is intimately linked with the feminine energy touching on corporal themes, explorations of the body but also in relation to nature, exploring the fear, fascination, and mirroring of mother earth. Using a vocabulary of symbolism on these subjects, she explores the human states of connection; vulnerability, intimacy and ecstatic experiences. In their executions we find collage, painting, drawing, fabric sculptures, plasticine and tactile media. Bordered by colors and shapes that can refer us to the infantile and feminine.

A key inspiration and fuel for her practice is her work as an art educator and social artist. She is regularly delivering creative workshops with members of the public and works closely with children. Her socially engaged practice always informs her work. A deep anthropological curiosity for all that is human and social, our relationships with nature and the natural, honest and intimate states of how many exist and engage with the world.

You can find more information about her work at www.greerpester.com and through her Instagram accounts: @greerpester (visual art) & @greer_socialart (workshops).