Sometimes I suspect I'm not a very good consumer of art, and maybe that goes especially for contemporary art, as my tendency is to hop magpie-like through exhibitions (even if going piece by piece, my attention may flit along the way) and seize upon the however many works make some kind of immediate-ish impression on me, even though their effect will often deepen upon prolonged exposure.
Here what that meant was that I didn't really engage with many of the piece in an exhibition whose concept - explorations of what it means to live in the present, today, given the technological, digital and informational intensity/mediation/overwhelmingness that characterises lived experience now - is v interesting but focused on the two that pulled me in, Ella Barclay's "Access Remote Fervour" (2017), the installation notes for which were perfect in both orientating me to the work and opening pathways to further engagement with its two mistily liquid tanks on which blurry projections of swimmers move - The interplay between the physical world and the immaterial world of ideas, data, the cloud and the internet are explored in this work. Taking inspiration from the ways humans store and transfer information - from written text in ancient Mesopotamia to giant underground server farms - the work considers the ethereal nature of data and thought. The two tanks suggest the presence of a consciousness within these watery capsules, pointing to something of the human soul caught in the flux of the electronic transfer of data and light:
and "Eremocene (Age of Loneliness)", Keith Armstrong with Luke Lickfold and Matthew Davis (2017), which presents three literal perspectives on a single glowingly translucent 'object' periodically regenerating, suspended and unfurling in the dark.
Here what that meant was that I didn't really engage with many of the piece in an exhibition whose concept - explorations of what it means to live in the present, today, given the technological, digital and informational intensity/mediation/overwhelmingness that characterises lived experience now - is v interesting but focused on the two that pulled me in, Ella Barclay's "Access Remote Fervour" (2017), the installation notes for which were perfect in both orientating me to the work and opening pathways to further engagement with its two mistily liquid tanks on which blurry projections of swimmers move - The interplay between the physical world and the immaterial world of ideas, data, the cloud and the internet are explored in this work. Taking inspiration from the ways humans store and transfer information - from written text in ancient Mesopotamia to giant underground server farms - the work considers the ethereal nature of data and thought. The two tanks suggest the presence of a consciousness within these watery capsules, pointing to something of the human soul caught in the flux of the electronic transfer of data and light:
and "Eremocene (Age of Loneliness)", Keith Armstrong with Luke Lickfold and Matthew Davis (2017), which presents three literal perspectives on a single glowingly translucent 'object' periodically regenerating, suspended and unfurling in the dark.
