Pattern and Presence

 I Was Raised on the Internet

Assemblage (new)

Assemblage (About)

Assemblage (chain)

Assemblage (canvas)

Assemblage (shell)

Assemblages dates to the time shortly after I graduated from art school. At that time my friends and I were often experiencing artworks through the images posted on sites like Contemporary Art Daily. The images we saw were of pristine spaces with perfectly realised works. I wondered how it would be if I rendered the exhibitions using 3-D software - programmes like Cinema 4-D were among the programmes I used for the works. Once I created these renders, I could post them and see if they would be featured on the blogs alongside the exhibition views on which they were based. 

The idea worked a little too well. A gallerist in London saw the images online and she liked them. Thinking they were IRL works, she asked if she could show them. It was a very generative dilemma. I could either admit they were digital works and had no physical dimension, or I could create the works IRL. I decided to accept the challenge, and it was challenging. The works are spheres, the easiest shapes to create digitally. It’s three clicks, assigning an image as a texture on a sphere and then making adjustments. To make the same shape in physical material is among the hardest things you can do.

For the surfaces, I printed some images from Google image searches - mostly textures from ready-made render kits. I chose mostly images that represented complex systems, network cables, intestines, whatever I could find that was interlocking and complex. The works became sculptures about the ways in which systems fit together, interpenetrate, and elude each other. The sphere is a kind of container, but also a fixed border, holding these complexities in tension and in place, not least the complexities behind their own creation. 