Wallach Art Gallery, New York City, USA, 2024




Disposition_01/02, 2024⁣


Exterior wall cladding mounted on aluminium hardware and sound-insulating tiles⁣
270 cm x 180 cm each

Disposition, 2024



The Wallach Gallery within Columbia University’s Lenfest Centre of The Arts in New York City is designed by architect Renzo Piano. The exhibition spaces and the exterior facade of the building shares a deep similarity, albeit significantly scaled down, with the Piano designed Whitney Museum.

For my presentation, I decided to approach the architectural relationship of these two sites, so deeply entwined with the cultural consciousness of this city, as a space for further investigation and possible intervention. ⁣

Through an arduous process of enquiry, I managed to determine the exact brand of the cladding used on the exterior facades of both buildings, and subsequently acquired a series of them.

Before moving to New York, I spend twelve years living in London, and a particular vivid and devastating memory of my time in that city is breathing the smoke of Grenfell Tower as it burned in June of 2017 killing 72 people. The ferocity of the fire, it was later determined, was due to the use of cheap, non-regulated cladding, as a direct consequence of greed and negligence perpetrated by the landlords and construction companies — emboldened by the Conservative government and their cruel, classist and racist policies. Following that, cladding and the systemic violence it had come to represent, became a thing of the UK social and political discourse.⁣

I did not simply want to extract the panels from their intended utility and present them as relics or artifacts of a commodified urban hellscape. I felt the intervention of the hand was important. An insistence on existence, if you will. ⁣I decided to engrave a selection of small drawings I have been making over the last several years onto the surfaces; in an attempt to transcribe, through subtle acts of refusal and transformation, an intimate sense of urgency and private interiority upon the cold, precision-engineered membranes of these iconic institutions. ⁣

Like scratches on the walls of a cage.⁣





Disposition_01, 2024⁣ (Detail)


Exterior wall cladding mounted on aluminium hardware and sound-insulating tiles⁣
270 cm x 180 cm

README, Artist book, Edition of 10 + 1 AP


README is a text-based anthology that investigates the porosity of language and the aesthetics of violence by applying the computer virus as a discursive and formal framework. 

The included material is mined over a two year period from various online forums and archives loosely affiliated with incel and alt-right subcultures, some hosted on the dark- and grey web, and some dating back more than a decade. 


Though the initial premise of the project was to examine the increasingly entangled nature of human agency and technology, my research soon revealed a devastatingly relevant social and political misanthropy that warranted further exploration.


To my surprise, I found that many of the authors of these viruses discreetly uses the scripts as platforms to embed and hide, what can best be described as a confessional style diary — complete with poetry and declarations of love. Due to the sheer quantity of codes available, such entries are not unlike messages in bottles, adrift on an expansive digital sea with very little chance of ever being recovered. 


Since the diaristic notations are without a designated recipient, a shift in the rhetoric appeared. The all-too-familiar vitriolic fervour became un-directional. It was no longer organised towards individuals or groups existing outside the regressive and dogmatic worldview of the extreme right. It laid bare a visceral fragility of the authors, often artificially alleviated through a fraught sense of proximity to their anonymous peers; manifesting as obscure salutations and hints at brotherhood and community written deep into the strings of code. As a result, the hatred and pain that initially confronts you in these virtual spheres began to dissipate, and an unmitigated infrastructure of vulnerability and care is exposed beneath the brittle surface of conditioned apathy and moral destitution.


README, 2024 (selection of pages)


Artist book, 180 Pages, Edition of 10 + 1AP


README, 2024 (As presented at Wallach Art Gallery)


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Flat As A Flag_SQ01, 2024⁣

⁣As a result of the accelerating entanglement of the private and the public, new structural formations are emerging and thus new modes in which violence and exclusion will be exercised. This spiral towards algorithmic optimisation and the consolidation of monopolised corporate/institutional power is increasingly driven by an artificial non-human logic that negates conventional strategies of cultural resistance.⁣

A critical approach to infrastructure and by engaging these novel systems of oppression through the established analytical framework of formal visual language, and in particular the vernacular of painting (texture, gesture, composition, scale) has the potential to expose and disrupt urban architectural spaces as weaponised sites of control and subjugation of individual agency.⁣

Following such thinking, I approach fibreglass as an emblematic image of the connective tissue of the built environment; never visible in its raw materiality, yet a constant and decisive element of the structural integrity of countless objects in our immediate vicinity — as a hidden armature of petrochemical waste (resin) held together by fibrous strains of razor sharp glass.⁣








Flat As A Flag_01, 2024⁣ 


Oil, enamel, fibreglass and epoxy resin on canvas

200 cm x 200 cm


Study of Artificial Flower as Embroidery after W. Kilburn, 1777, 1-5/6, 2024⁣ 


Silver thread embroidery on raw natural linen in welded artist frame

62 cm x 47 cm


C L E A R I N G Gallery, Los Angeles, USA 2025


Study of Artificial Flower as Embroidery after W. Kilburn, 1777, 1/6, 2024⁣ 


Silver thread embroidery on raw natural linen in welded artist frame

62 cm x 47 cm


Study of Artificial Flower as Embroidery after W. Kilburn, 1777, 2/6, 2024⁣ 


Silver thread embroidery on raw natural linen in welded artist frame

62 cm x 47 cm

Study of Artificial Flower as Embroidery after W. Kilburn, 1777



In 1777 a book called Flora Londinensis was published by the botanist William Curtis. It included several intricate copper stitchings by the foremost botanical artists of the time, and its stated purpose was to catalog the natural flora in a ten mile radius of London; to document the “rich and beautiful” nature around the capital of The British Empire.

Obviously, the majority of the flowers depicted in the volume were non-native to England as they had been imported, often by chance and accident, by sailors, merchants and soldiers returning home from across The Empire.

Due to the overwhelming public interest in the publication outside of its intended scientific circles, one of the illustrators of the volume, a W. Kilburn, started reproducing his contributions as decorative tapestries and wallpapers for the residences of the aristocracy and ruling class. Kilburn soon realised the artistic and financial potential of these reproductions and therefor petitioned The Crown that the work would be licensed and only re-producible under his authority. Though the request was initially denied (though later granted for a two months duration), Kilburn’s action can be considered one of the first instances of an artist attempting to legally copyright their work.

.

The fraught legal claim of artistic ownership of the‘rich and beautiful’ natural environments of The Empire and the attempt to attain formal institutional control of floral illustrations which subjects originated in occupied and subjugated nations is the cultural extension of the violent colonial conquest of The British Empire and the apparatus that sustained it. Further complicating and exacerbating Kilburn’s statutory pursuits is the likelihood that many of the contributed illustrations was not completed as observational studies and was a amalgamation of plants with different periods of efflorescence, different soil requirements and, in some cases, fictional hybrids of various known and unknown flowers, leafs and stems.


This series of works is a selection of W. Kilburn’s contribution to Flora Londinensis, embroidered with silver thread on raw natural linen, much like they would have been when adorning the walls of stately houses across England in the late 18th century.







Flora Londinensis, 1777


Wellcome Collection, The V&A Museum

Artifical Flowers


The making of synthetic and artificial flowers as imitations of natural beauty and as reflections of the transience of life and mortality has been practiced throughout recorded time.


The Ancient Egyptians crafted colourful floral wreaths from thin horn plates as adornments for burial sites and residences of the Pharaohs. The draughtsmen of the Roman Empire would be perfecting the craft or replicating flowers and plants in wax with such proficiency that the Emperors would wear them as crowns. In China, the practice dates back further than 1.000 BC when floral arrangement would be made of silk and displayed as tokens of wealth and as diplomatic gifts of goodwill between trading partners and peace offerings exchanged between warring factions.

Queen Elizabeth is said to have had multiple people in her employment at court to produce silk and glass flowers for the ornamentation of the royal palaces across the British Empire.


Since the very first cave paintings, flowers has been a chosen motif for artists applying their skills for public display, and it is by no coincidence that the endurance of the motif has persevered through history; albeit with shifting conceptual undertones responding to changing diachronic cultural and social climates. From the celebration of natural beauty, to display of financial fortuity, through symbolic reminders of the fragility and sanctity of co-existence and the nurture required in upholding peace, to stark reminders of death and Mans dominance over nature.


Nature, during the colonial era, became hallmarks of the uncivilisedand a constant subject of subjugation in the name of extraction and expansion. The natives of the invaded nations and territories, who thrived and lived of their land — oftentimes cultivating and sustaining it in manners that was foreign to the conquering European nations — were hegemonically tied both spiritually and corporally to the notion of the natural, and nature as such became something to be tamed, cultivated and contained.

The depictions of flowers went from being observational to becoming representational, and in order for it to be so, it would have to conform to the same systems the colonisers imposed on the colonised; one of order and hierarchy.


Still-life paintings of floral arrangements became common in the middle ages and often acted as a way of professing technical skills and cultural acuity by the artist and, in extension, the nation from which they hailed. In the trope of Memento Mori, where flowers were painted as rotting and decaying, oftentimes next to human skulls and other signifiers of death and impermanence, naturethen became shorthand for a paradise lost and a bleak premonition of a forthcoming world of industrialisation and capital exploitation.

The symbolic meaning of the flower thus acquired a reciprocal semiotic purpose; it was no longer a celebration of natural life, but a celebration of death, reminding us that ‘ You, too, will die’.


For all its academic polemic and discursive trademarking, the artistic urge for the depictions of flowers has endured, and it only requires a quick trip to any museum to be reminded of as much. From the renaissance masters mentioned above, to Warhol and onwards — as decoration and as art, the fascination of the floral image seems untethered to time and space, and its symbolic and semiotic value, however chameleonic, appears undiminished.





Flora Londinensis, 1777 (Detail)


Wellcome Collection, The V&A Museum

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Charlottenborg Kunsthal, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2024


Photo by David Stjernholm

Poetics of Encryption


Kunsthal Charlottenborg presents this year’s major group exhibition in close collaboration with KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.Poetics of Encryptionexplores the dark side of tech, bringing together 38 international artists. Installed in Kunsthal Charlottenborg’s grand south wing, the exhibition spans analogue and digital media featuring historic and newly commissioned works.


Though we rely on digital tools for many things, we rarely understand how they work. Moreover, due to the proprietary nature of much corporate tech, even the most curious among us cannot gain deeper insight. Today, we are forced to come to terms with our relative lack of power in the face of inscrutable systems. What symptoms of this personal and political drama register in the cultural field? What moods, symbols, or narrative frames capture the aesthetics and politics of exclusion, occlusion, secrecy, and speculation concerning technology’s inside?


The exhibition is curated by Nadim Samman, the author of the recent book titledPoetics of Encryption. Art and the Technocene. It surveys an imaginative landscape marked by ‘Black Sites’, ‘Black Boxes’, and ‘Black Holes’ — terms that indicate how technical systems capture users, how they work in stealth, and how they distort cultural space-time. These three themes form the basis for the exhibitionPoetics of Encryptionthat play out across more than 1000 m2 in Kunsthal Charlottenborg’s south wing.


Participating artists: Nora Al-Badri, Morehshin Allahyari, Emmanuel Van der Auwera, Gillian Brett, Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion, Nanna Debois Buhl, Julian Charrière, Joshua Citarella, Clusterduck, Juan Covelli, Kate Crawford, Sterling Crispin, Simon Denny, enorê, Mathias Gramoso, Jürgen Mayer H., Roger Hiorns, Tilman Hornig, Vladan Joler, Daniel Keller, Andrea Khôra, Jonna Kina, Kristian Kragelund, Juliana Cerqueira Leite, Eva & Franco Mattes, Carsten Nicolai, Simone C Niquille, Trevor Paglen, Matthias Planitzer, Jon Rafman, Rachel Rossin, Sebastian Schmieg, Charles Stankievech, Most Dismal Swamp, Troika, Nico Vascellari


Poetics of Encryptionis initiated by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, with support by Volkswagen Group. The exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg is supported by the Aage and Johanne Louis-Hansen’s Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation, the Beckett Foundation, the Danish Art Foundation, the New Carlsberg Foundation, the Obel Family Foundation, the William Demant Foundation.


Algopolis, 2024⁣ (Detail)


Reclaimed and maniuplated heatsinks on aluminium table

Variable dimensions


Algopolis, 2024⁣ (Detail)


Reclaimed and maniuplated heatsinks on aluminium table

Variable dimensions

Algopolis


‘Generative design’ is the concept of design generating design. A set of pre-determined parameters are written into an algorithm — such as maximum weight and size, what materials are to be used and what kind of stress the final object will be exposed to. The algorithm then proposes an ‘ideal’ form that functions within the given framework.


Heatsinks are the results of such method of production. Their intentional purpose is to disperse heat from the CPU in a computer to avoid overheating and malfunction. It needs to be manufactured from a material that is heat conductive, it requires the largest possible surface area for dispersion of energy, and ultimately, it needs to fit within the physical limitations of the actual hardware. The result is a uniquely accurate material manifestation of the term ‘form follows function’.


However, as illustrated by the images above, when these heatsinks are extracted and arranged in a grid-like structure on a horizontal plane (through close collaboration with an city planner), they easily appear as dystopian visions of 20th century modernist architecture and bleak cityscapes.

The formal appearances of the work suggest a deep and unnerving affinity between human- and machine thinking around the principles of design, efficiency, and optimisation; and raises urgent questions about a (near) future of AI driven spatial administration of the built environments and, by extension, its inhabitants.

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Bjorn & Gundorph Gallery, Aarhus, Denmark, 2020


A Terminal Posture

Bjorn & Gundorph Gallery, Denmark


By Jeppe Ugelvig


Kristian Kragelund is a multi-disciplinar artist who's practice is concerned with how value and power asserts itself through acts of subliminal violence within the structural formations of every day life. With a particular interest in infrastructure and the built environment as a contested space of political, corporate and personal agency, and subsequently how the conceptual dynamics of production and consumption becomes determining factors of individual aspiration and contemporary identity. 

Through a critical examination of commercial and industrial debris as ambivalent artefacts of the human condition in the 21st century, he proposes a reevaluation of the historical, material and textual inertia of the object, and its speculative potential as agents of a new sensibility; aesthetically applied as strategies of change and disruption. 


Kristian Kragelund (1987, Denmark) received his BA (Honours) in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in London and and MFA in Painting at Columbia University in New York City. He has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and his work is held in several private and public collections including The Danish Arts Foundation and as a permanent public commission in Whitechapel, London. 


An “artefact” is commonly defined as a historical object created by a human(oid) that provides information about the given time in which the object was created. Popularly employed by social sciences such as anthropology and ethnology, the term is noticeably vague in its definition: from a tool to a totem, it could be anything created by humans that gives information about the culture of its creator and users. In more recent times, the term ‘artefact’ has been introduced to describe a tangible by-product, or error, occurring as the result of the computation of data. The most common of these artefacts is a so-called “compression artefact,” a noticeable distortion of media (including images, audio, and video) caused by the application of lossy compression. These artefacts appear as spurious signals: visually, they appear as bands or ‘ghosts' near edges; audibly, they appear as sonic “echos.” In both cases, artefacts are carriers of complex information that has become partially or fully indecipherable–partially lost to history, unintelligible to human comprehension. But to which extent do data artefacts qualify as carriers of societal knowledge when their deteriorated language – broken data – goes beyond human semantics? What is the status of these new artefacts, as objects and as relics of their time – what “information” do they hold, as material or as objects in their own right?  


In A Terminal Posture, Kragelund re-purposes a range of artefacts sourced from the data and energy industry into formal elements of artworks. A range of discarded full-size silicone discs (Untitled_Artefact_x, 2020), appropriated as rejects directly from a production site in Silicon Valley, CA., is installed throughout the gallery, their glitches particularly noticeable in the spectral colour patterns.

 A new body of wall-based work (Untitled_Orchids 1-5, 2020) presents similar laser-cut silicon wafers – also known as semiconductors – sourced from a research facility in the US specialising in the development of automated control systems and artificial intelligence (AI) for the military industrial complex. Fitted within frames, these disused semiconductors can be considered as failed or burned out nervous systems of super-computers, once imprinted with data but now reduced to dysfunctional silicone relics: in other words, high-tech waste. Kragelund relates the unknowability of these former processes to his own prosopagnosia (“face blindness”) through the printed figure of an orchid, whose large genetic variety of colours and patterns makes it ideal for training face recognition to AI.


Elsewhere, arranged to an off-set grid-like pattern, anodised solar cells in blue technical hues have been stripped of their circuits and electrical wiring thus rendered unable to contain and distribute the energy the harvest (Untitled_CellF1, 2020). A sculptural work of reclaimed aluminium heat sinks from computer CPUs are organised on a horizontal plane resembling a model of a cityscape (Algopolis, 2020). Heat sinks are post-human design objects shaped by algorithms to maximise surface areas so as to expel maximum heat from computers; however, their formal resemblance to modernist architectural schemes suggests a deeper linkage between human and machine thinking around design, efficiency, and spatial administration. 


The title of the exhibition is adapted from a particular short chapter in J.G. Ballard’s seminal novel The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), in which the boundaries of the mechanic and the human, the building and the body, poetically dissolve into impermanent placeholders and metaphors for one another. 


“A TERMINAL POSTURE. 

Lying on the worn concrete of the gunnery aisles, he assumed the postures of the film actress, assuaging his past dreams and anxieties in the dune-like fragments of her body.” 


 - J.G. Ballard / The Atrocity Exhibition, 1970


Through these various formal propositions, Kragelund offers a subtle critique and reading of the contemporary technological moment as it relates to creation and cognition – by humans and machines alike. By employing aesthetics in this process, he evokes its long critical tradition of grabbling with the most abstract of concepts: representation, information, memory, nature, time. His methodology suggests that while technology may already have exceeded or imploded many of these notions from within (often far beyond human comprehension), art still offers analogies – metaphors – to critically approach them, as entry points into deeper philosophical and political speculation.


Untitled_Orchids1-4, 2020


Expired and laser cut silicon semiconductor wafers, UV printed and mounted in artist frame

120 x 80 cm each


Algopolis, 2020 


Reclaimed heat sinks on welded steel table 

100 x 200 x 115 cm


Algopolis, 2020 


Reclaimed heat sinks on welded steel table 

100 x 200 x 115 cm


Untitled_CellF1, 2020


Malfunctioned and anodised solar cells in welded steel frame

200 x 200 cm


Untitled_Orchids4-5, 2020


Expired and laser cut silicon semiconductor wafers,

UV printed and mounted in artist frame

120 x 80 cm each


Untitled_Orchids4-5, 2020


Expired and laser cut silicon semiconductor wafers, UV printed and mounted in artist frame

120 x 80 cm each


Prosopagnosia



Untitled_Orchid1-5 is a series of laser-cut and UV printed silicon semiconductor wafers sourced from a research facility in the US specialising in the development of automated control systems and AI based facial recognitions software primarily for the military industrial complex. Mounted on aluminium and fitted within welded frames, these specific expired semiconductors can be considered as the failed or burned-out nervous systems used in the fabrication of super-computers. Once regulating the flow of energy and large quantities of sensitive data but now reduced to dysfunctional silicone relics. 


On the surface of each of the five works are rendered illustrations of synthetic orchids - synthetic flowers are not based on an actual existing flower, they are designed and conceived based on the idea of a flower - thus addressing conventional notions of the still life and the reproduction of nature.

The flowers of (real) orchids are increasingly applied in the AI processes involved in developing facial recognition software, partly due to their large genetic variety of colours and forms, and partly due to recently introduced data-protection legislation restricting the access for private contractors to governmental databases. Orchids evolves much in the same generational manner as humans; the ‘offspring’ of an orchids might look somewhat different than the parental plant, but its genealogy can be traced via. geometrical scan in similar ways as a human face, therefore making them a valuable asset in computer-learning.


This relates directly to Kragelund’s own condition of recently diagnosed prosopagnosia (face blindness), and the existential questions that arises from the paradox of him being unable to recognise faces, whereas the software developed by means of these semiconductors and the imagery printed onto them, is capable of just that.









Untitled_Orchids1, 2020


Expired and laser cut silicon semiconductor wafers, UV printed and mounted in artist frame

120 x 80 cm


Untitled_Orchids2-4, 2020


Expired and laser cut silicon semiconductor wafers, UV printed and mounted in artist frame

120 x 80 cm each


Untitled_Orchids2-3, 2020


Expired and laser cut silicon semiconductor wafers, UV printed and mounted in artist frame

120 x 80 cm each


Algopolis, 2020 


Reclaimed heat sinks on welded steel table 

100 x 200 x 115 cm

Artefacts and The Age of Anxiety


Anthropologists have suggested that for analytical purposes, ‘culture’ can be viewed as a three-part structure composed of the following subsystems: ‘Artefacts’, ‘Mentifacts’ and ‘Sociofacts’. 


An ‘Artefact’ is commonly defined as a historical object created by a human(oid), that provides information about the given time in which the object was created. More specifically it is a term used in the social sciences, particularly anthropology, ethnology and sociology for anything created by humans which gives information about the culture of its creator and users. However, from a philosophical point of view, the classification of an artefact is rather vague and relative.


Take, as an example a seashell used by indigenous people to scrape fat and tissue of the pelt from a skinned animal. Does the essential properties of an inanimate object change the second a human handles it and thus ascribes its  function? Is it when the same human sharpens the edges of the seashell to improve the objects functionality, or is when the human picks up the shell from the riverbed and walks to the tannery station in her camp? At what point does the seashell become an artefact encoded with anthropological information and contemporary scientific relevance? A ‘Mentifact’ is a term used to describe the traits of a specific culture, such as beliefs, values and ideas. Furthermore, it offers classifications as to how speech, language and symbols over time have the potential to become conceivable objects in their own right. Mythologies, religion, philosophy, and folk wisdom are fundamental in this abstract ideological subsystem, inasmuch as they tell us what we ought to believe, what we should value and how we ought to act based upon those values and beliefs. This concept has been useful to anthropologists in refining the definition of culture. The idea of the mentifact was first introduced during the cognitive revolution in the social sciences on the 1960s, as a quantitative tool to grasp the complexities of cultures. Essentially, it disregards or at least questions the value of artefacts as defining elements of social epistemological knowledge, and proposes that cultural dynamics are created through a cineplex web of social interactions.


‘Sociofacts’, also known as ‘Psychofacts’, define the social organisation of culture and is applied to identify patterns of social relations (power structures), most notably in regards of a given society’s predominant political, military or religious affiliation. Sociofacts regulate how the individual functions relative to a group, whether it be family, church or state, and traces whichever behavioural patterns (i.e. rituals) are absorbed and transmitted from one generation to the next. 


Of the aforementioned subsystems, the significance of the ‘Artefact’ for the way in which we structure historical narrative is the easiest (at least on a platonic level) to approach. For an object to become an artefact, it has to transcend the boundary of object/subject relationship and undergo a semiotically irreversible transformation; from being a rock, to being a hammer. The rock not only appropriates the function of a hammer, but likewise the idea of one, which, depending on how we look at it, is an eternal concept. The other two subcategories proposed for the articulation and definition of culture, both heavily rely on linguistic elements in the transmission of information from generation to generation. Often, this communication relies on spoken and/or written language, which implicates an exponentially evolving margin of error and corruption of the authentic message each time it is relayed. As mentioned in the very beginning, an artefact is an object purposely and consciously created by a person to fulfil a specific purpose within a given culture, at a given time - something which contemporary science and sociology can employ in their research and understanding of historical consensus.


Over the last decades, parallel to the rapid evolution of software development, a new definition of the artefact has been introduced; as a tangible by-product, or error, occurring as the result of the computation of data. The sense of artefacts as digital by-products is similar to the use of the term ‘Artefact’ in the applied sciences, where it refers to something that arises from the process in hand rather than the issue itself. In the theories of natural science and signal processing, an artefact is ‘any error in the perception or representation of information, introduced by the involved equipment or technique(s).’ A compression artefact is arguably the most common artefact we encounter in our daily lives (much more so, than, say a Byzantine tool at the National Museum), which is a noticeable distortion of media (including images, audio, and video) caused by the application of lossy compression.

Lossy data compression involves discarding some of the media's data so that it becomes simplified enough for storage within a desired virtual space or for it to be transmitted within certain bandwidth limitations. In signal processing, particularly digital image processing, Artefacts appear as spurious signals near sharp transitions in a signal. Visually, they appear as bands or ‘ghosts' near edges; audibly, they appear as sonic echos. 


When we, as a society, move towards a complete digitisation of all accumulated data and knowledge, does it not beg the question whether this ‘new’ artefact, or glitch/error, as we presently call it, will be a defining subcategory of the future in the theoretical construction and dissimilation of culture? Attempts to map the evolution of language and semantics will forever fall prey to the limitations of self-articulation (we can only describe language with the words it provides), and is as such incapable of holistically asserting any epistemological truth, which is why we tend towards an affinity for artefacts in our quest for authenticity and existential understanding of origin and direction - as opposed to the written word. However, when these artefacts are not solely produced by the human intuition and the human hand, but are in fact the by-products of rogue and overloaded algorithms, it somewhat short-circuits the romantic notion that human action and ingenuity stands as the primary agents of our time.

Recently, scientists have exclaimed that we have now officially entered the age of The Anthropocene; A geological epoch in which the activity of man is the dominant influence of environment, climate, etc. However, one might suggest, as with all historical ideologies and narratives, that the identification of the anthropogenic era has emerged retrospectively, and what we are currently living through could appropriately be referred to as The Algopocene. ‘Algo’ carrying the double meaning of both being the abbreviation used in a variety of coding languages for algorithm, as well as álgos being the greek word for ‘pain’ and on an expanded spectrum ‘anxiety’. The Age of Anxiety.

Anxiety being a diffuse, objectless, future-oriented variation of fear; a (de)motivating factor of human actions, that will have profound social, cultural, geopolitical and economical impact on our society, likely on par with the consequences we have attributed to the anthropogenic. It will determine elections, policies, ethics and identity for years to come, it will lay bare a capitalist structure where the continual production and consumption of goods determines priorities of public health and welfare. An anxious population will be kept in check and line by cliff-hanger negotiations of congressional support-schemes or ever-postponed prospects of international trades deal and future custom restrictions, ensuring that final decisions and proclamations are solely made on a basis that more suspense and uncertainty will unavoidably follow. Anxiety, being at once personal, yet collective and at the same time abundantly universal, crosses the threshold of what we have started to refer to as ‘hyperobjects’ - entities of such vast temporal, spacial and existential dimension that they defeat traditional ideas of what constitutes any articulated object or phenomenon. A hyperobject cannot be defined nor indicated by any single sensory experience of reality, its accessibility is most often solely permitted through data and analysis, and its visceral sensation is somewhat analogous to an uncanny interruption of the physical real.

Our anxieties are embodied and amplified by a relentless image culture that indirectly lends shapes and forms to more immediate fears; something we can directly engage with, as opposed to the nature of anxiety. Anxiety takes no form, it poses no direct or immediate threat to organic or material matter (however, it enables this threat), it does not ‘steal our job’, ‘disrespect our God’ nor ‘violate our borders’ - it is, as a hyperobject, beyond conventional classification; it is ambiguously spiritual yet explicitly concrete. It is as detrimental, pertinent and terminal in its presence as any future religion or messianic deity could possible be or become.












Algopolis, 2020 (Detail)


Reclaimed heat sinks on welded steel table 

100 x 200 x 115 cm


Algopolis, 2020 (Detail)


Reclaimed heat sinks on welded steel table 

100 x 200 x 115 cm


Algopolis, 2020 (Detail)


Reclaimed heat sinks on welded steel table 

100 x 200 x 115 cm


Untitled_CellF1, 2020


Malfunctioned and anodised solar cells in welded steel frame

200 x 200 cm


Untitled_CellF1, 2020


Malfunctioned and anodised solar cells in welded steel frame

200 x 200 cm


Untitled_Artefact_1-3, 2020


Rejected and malfunctioned silicon semiconductor wafers on mount

30 cm diameter each

Silicon Semiconductor Wafers


Almost all production of today's electronic technology involves the use of silicon semiconductors. The functions of which includes the amplification of signals and energy conversion, the most important aspect being the integrated circuit (IC), which are essential in the development and use of computers, smartphones, medical and military hardware etc. There are approximately 68 million square meters of silicon semiconductors shipped around the world each year, however it is one of these few obscure things that are ever present, yet very rarely come in direct contact with - making Silicon Valley a rather befitting alias. Besides including some of largest companies in the world, particularly in Taiwan, China and Japan, the semiconductor industry is the third largest manufacturing sector in the US economy with the unique feature of having approximately 25% of its combined budget devoted solely towards research and development. This gives a notion of the projected importance of these devices in the future as we move towards an epoch of increasingly advanced and complex tasks performed by tech. Due to their widespread application in almost all industries, the companies that manufacture and test these are according to marketwatch.com, The Economist and CNBC Trading considered, albeit somewhat volatile, reliant indicators of the health of the overall global economy. 


Silicon [Si-14] is a plentiful natural and non-metallic element of the carbon-family and makes up 27.7% of the earth’s crust, only surpassed by oxygen. It has the unique property of conducting energy under some conditions and insulating under others, while being resistant to very high temperatures and currents. The inherent properties of Silicon can be modified through introducing impurities (so-called doping) Through a variety of chemical and mechanical processes, allowing for increased conductivity and maximised control. These characteristics make it an ideal material for making transistors that amplifies and conveys electronic signals.


A symbolic comparison of the semi-conductor’s role in a computer would be to that of the nervous system of the body. It regulates and controls impulses and distributes the necessary amounts of data and energy to the appropriate sectors of a much larger and completely interdependent system

The colours and composition of these particular wafers are all due to glitches and errors in the manufacturing process, what in computational science is known as artefacts.



Untitled_Artefact_5, 2020


Rejected and malfunctioned silicon semiconductor wafers on mount

30 cm diameter each




Untitled_Artefact_8, 2020


Rejected and malfunctioned silicon semiconductor wafers on mount

30 cm diameter each


Untitled_Artefact_9, 2020


Rejected and malfunctioned silicon semiconductor wafers on mount

30 cm diameter


Untitled_Artefact_5-6, 2020


Rejected and malfunctioned silicon semiconductor wafers on mount

30 cm diameter each


Untitled_Artefact_9-11, 2020


Rejected and malfunctioned silicon semiconductor wafers on mount

30 cm diameter each


Untitled_Artefact_12-14, 2020


Rejected and malfunctioned silicon semiconductor wafers on mount

30 cm diameter each

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The Bells of Whitechapel, 2020


The Bells of Whitechape, Permanent Public Commission, Whitechapel, London, UK


The Bells of Whitechapel is a permament public sculpture developed in response to the rich history of manufacturing in the Whitechapel area of London's Eastend and particularly considering The Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a point of departure.


The Whitechapel Bell Foundry was heralded as UK’s oldest manufacturing company dating back to 1570, and its recent closure has been widely contested and condemned as emblematic of a corrosion of the identity and sensibilities of our city and its communities at the heart of an area that is known for its cultural and ethnical diversity.


Each bell foundry around the world has its own unique alloy of copper and zinc for their casting process - copper for resonance and zinc for strength - resulting in distinctive qualities, each exclusive to the specific foundry. By working closely with former casters from the Whitechapel foundry we managed to reproduce and cast their particular alloy into large sheets. These sheets were cut, folded and welded in the precise dimensions of the bricks of the wall where the work was to be mounted.

The final arrangements of the alloy bricks is in reference to the music-box notation of an old British nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’ in which each verse refers to a different bell/church tower in London, all of which had their bells cast in Whitechapel. 


Historically the chime of bells were the sound of gathering. Whether to gather in celebration or to prepare for an imminent threat, the sound would transcended class, race, culture, gender and age. If you were within earshot of the bells, it would likely affect you.


This work was developed under the long shadow of a conservative government and the perpetual Brexit deadlock. This was a period in which I found the UK to be politically, culturally and socially fractured, and in many ways at an ideological crossroad. However, as a result of the extraordinary situations of political turmoil we have collectively lived through, there seems to be a growing sense of community and compassion across most spectrums of society and one can only hope that this will last and manifest into a reality of compassion and care instead of our current one of disparity and division.


The Bells of Whitechapel, 2020


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The Bells of Whitechapel, 2020



The Bells of Whitechapel, 2020



Original lyrics for Oranges & Lemons with illustrations by Walter Crane (1845 - 1915)



Untitled_MB_LO04, 2023


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

200 x 150 cm


Untitled_MB_LO06, 2023


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

200 x 140 cm 


Untitled_MB_LO01, 2023


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

200 x 140 cm 


Untitled_MB_m01, 2021


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

180 x 110 cm


Untitled_MB_LO02, 03, 2023


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

200 x 140 cm

Mach Bands


Mach Bands refers to an illusion where a band of adjacent gradients will visually appear to be lighter or darker than they actually are by triggering an edge-detection response in the optical nerve. 

The phenomena is named after the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach (1838-1916) who is known and recognised for his work in optics, mechanics, wave dynamics as well as notable advances in the (then) theoretical field of supersonic travel.


The concept of Mach Bands is applicable in several different scientific fields, often to vastly different, and sometimes outright contradictory effect. 


In nature, it helps boost the perception of an objects periphery, making it possible for an animal to detect the edge of an approaching threat from outside their general field of vision; one that might otherwise not be have been noticed until it it was too late. (Anticipatory)

However, in modern medical science this has paradoxically been attributed as a source of diagnostic error in radiology, where damaged tissue gets overlooked and misdiagnosed - potentially with fatal results. (Delayed)


Furthermore, in rendering computer graphics of virtual environments, for example in gaming or for CGI reliant movies, the Mach effect is used as a technical mean in smoothing or separating distinctive surfaces. This is done to create an enhanced experience of the virtual, where an artificial space becomes as interchangeable as possible from reality. (Concurrent)


The study of Mach Bands can, in my opinion, offer perspective and alternative understandings of the body in relation to space - and ultimately have the potential to reconfigure binary assumptions of representation and perception.





Untitled_MB_LO05, 2023


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

200 x 140 cm 


Untitled_MB_m03-04, 2021


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

180 x 110 cm each


Untitled_MB_m02, 2021


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

180 x 110 cm 


Untitled_MB_s01, 2021


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

76 x 56 cm 

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Untitled_MB_s02, 2021


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

76 x 56 cm 


Untitled_MB_s03, 2021


Oil, fibreglass and resin on canvas

76 x 56 cm