Dolerite / Solarized Pigmatosis

EMBEDDED4 July – 29 August 2008Caroline Achaintre, Nick Crowe, Dan Hays, Woodrow Kernohan, Brighid Lowe, Caroline McCarthy, Johannes Maier, Suzanne Mooney, Abigail Reynolds, Dan Shipsides, Jeffrey Ty-LeeImages are built out of complex processes of engagement and use, made particularly visible through the impact of new technologies as they change attitudes towards surveillance, information gathering, pornography, celebrity and so on. This exhibition examines the systems that affect such change. The artists taking part can be compared to the embedded news reporter, in that they are working from within the processes of image manufacture. From this position, the work exhibited is able to provide revelatory and expansive commentary on the structures that bring images into being.This exposure of process is often in a different medium to that being examined. Typically, the intangible nature of digital and virtual space is explored through plastic, tangible methods such as installation and montage. In the work of Nick Crowe, for example, glass becomes a plane of convergence between disparate fields in digital space. In his Aer Lingus series, glamorised portraits of airhostesses are combined in glass with unsolicited email from contact agencies. In a new work for the exhibition, Nick Crowe utilises the interface provided by the gallery window, acknowledging its materiality while offering, via a website address, an additional engagement with a virtual scene.Brighid Lowes response to the structures found within systems of exchange is physically manifested in Each Long Second, which presents a model of aimless interconnectivity. Abigail Reynolds likewise utilises material processes to unlock information systems. In The Grand Mutator, a number-based crochet pattern is put through a series of mathematical sequences, based on genome sequencing, each producing a variant form. Physicality is fundamental to the working process of Dan Shipsides, which uses the climbers experience of the rock face to explore visual constructs. He collaborates with John McNamee, a visually impaired climber, in Dolerite / Solarized Pigmatosis 2, where tangible and visible merge as cameras attached to the climbers fingers seek their way across the rocks surface . Woodrow Kernohan, in Four Four, plays with variation between materiality and image, drilling his way out of screen-based representation. Caroline McCarthy cuts holes from coloured bin bags using the resulting dots to painstakingly reconstruct a traditional still life in the manner of mass printing. Caroline Achaintres carpets lend a chunky substantiality to the digital grid, but in the watercolours that inform them the structure of the downloaded image is dissolved.Presentational structures applied to the Internet image: the distortions caused, the selectivity of the search engine, inform the painting of Dan Hays. His internet journey has taken him to Colorado, to pixellated landscapes he will never otherwise see. Jeffrey Ty Lee is concerned with the hidden architecture of representation and investigates the picture plane for clues to the image it holds. For Make Love to the Camera Suzanne Mooney photographs diagrams from a manual on glamour photography, providing a record of image manufacture that critically examines the structures behind the final product. Meanwhile, an anatomy of news-based imagery is revealed through the films of Johannes Maier. His research into the embedded reporter interrogates the relationship between producer and image. It is territory which all of the works negotiate in examining the mechanics of image production from the inside.Embedded is curated by David Waterworth, who lectures at The University of Greenwich, where he is curator of the Stephen Lawrence Gallery. He curated Wandering Rocks for Gimpel Fils Gallery in 2006.[1. Dolerite / Solarized Pigmatosis 2 was supported by grants from the AHRC, University of Ulster and Landscape & Environment.]Dolerite, Solarized PigmatosisDVD 12minDolerite, Solarized Pigmatosis is a twin video art work which presents footage of a climb in Donegal at Dumore Head. The black and white footage is taken from just the finger cameras and is very abstracted because of the sunny day which solarized parts of the footage – making the sun itself appear black. It is in real-time and is approximately 12 minutes long. During this climb the cameras started to malfunction on the short descent poetically adding to the sense of visually trying to record a physical or tactile experience. Additional audio is added to the start and end of the video which discusses aspects of blindness and anatomy.