Nomophobia

The proliferation of technology dominates almost every aspect of our lives; Nomophobia presents the work of six artists working with technology as a thematic concern.  Borrowing and embracing imagery and techniques from digital media, these artists offer critique for the disconnection from direct experience brought about by a society increasingly reliant on digital models.  Whether through the laborious process of replicating computerised systems by hand, adopting retro technological imagery to describe modern detachment and isolation, or engaging with contemporary technology to reinstate traditional rituals of communities; the artists all reference anxieties around the speed of change in a technologically-dependant society.

New work from Antony Densham presents configurations made using the marquee tool in Photoshop atop charcoal drawings of dilapidated edifices.  The use of hard lines and geometric accuracy mimic the instantaneous effects of digital manipulation, yet these complex and deeply layered compositions are a result of much consideration, created over long periods of time.  The technological surface of these pieces has been applied with deliberate frailty, allowing for glimpses in the underlying histories; painstaking mark-making in charcoal.   Flashy imagery is consciously flat and thin, becoming secondary to principal details.  The art-historical position of charcoal as the oldest artistic medium poses a comment on the merits of drawing and its underlying presence on all of contemporary art.

Briar Mark’s work also pays homage to traditional art-making, with hand stitched pieces a reflection of the recent revival of craft as a gesture of resistance to digital dominance.  These works create a relationship between the stitch and the digital pixel, demonstrating the inherent limitations of the two systems.  In spite of this similarity, handcraft provides a complete antithesis to digital culture; it is time consuming, unable to be mass-produced, and there is a huge potential for mistakes.   Using both humour and parody, Mark alludes to one of the most obvious aspects of craft: the sheer amount of time it takes. Something that could be done in under a minute on the computer takes hours if not days to stitch.  Referencing this within the work with statements like ‘If time is money than this should be worth a fortune,’ Mark highlights the notion of time as a commodity, encouraging viewers to slow down and reflect on an increasingly technologically reliant society.  Mark’s work illustrates the way craft has reached a higher level of appreciation; their tactility becomes desirable in the increasingly digitalised world.

Philip Madill reappropriates technological imagery from the 1950s and 60s to examine the proliferation of virtual technology over the last sixty years.  His paintings and drawings create displaced allusions to the virtual world, referencing the isolating and dehumanizing nature of the technology of virtual reality.  Madill employs the imagery of the cold war period, a marker of rapid social transformation due to the proliferation of television and the home computer, technologies that contributed to the development of a computer-generated virtual reality.  Madill is concerned with the simulated experiences evident in expanding global communication networks. Social theorist Pierre Levy argues that the 'virtualisation' of perception has resulted in the externalisation of our senses. The virtual experience is not restricted to the individual but brings together a multitude of virtual experiences, functioning as part of an even greater spectacle in which everything is seen through collective senses. 

PJ Paterson’s work employs digitally-driven techniques to offer a critique of the power structures and technologies that define contemporary life.  Paterson’s digitally collaged photography challenges cultural aesthetics, often borrowed from digital media and advertising, by reframing familiar imagery in unexpected ways.  Using original images from his own photographs, Paterson indentifies seemingly innocuous scenes and constructs a new reality through the time-consuming process of digital manipulation.  The resultant images are deliberately artificial yet posses a strange familiarity, as Paterson exploits the photographic medium’s tradition of communicating ‘realities;’ unlike a painting or drawing, a scene depicted in a photograph carries an expectation of authenticity. 

Brit Bunkley’s Futurology reflects with a mixture of disappointment and gratitude on twentieth century notions of ‘future.’  Childhood expectations of inheriting a world populated with George Jenson-style elevated homes is at odds with the alternative prospect of a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter.  Futurology addresses the present’s failure to live up to these technological aspirations, which is also a success of sorts; “we are still alive, the nuclear apocalypse has not (yet) come to pass.  Really, nothing much has changed.”[1]  The work studies futuristic edifices such as the Auckland Sky Tower, airport terminals, a natural gas cargo ship, and the Seattle Space Needle.  Bunkley mirrors each of these structures along a single axis, a minor adjustment that has a major effect; the ordinary, practical structures become features of a fantastic, Flash Gordon-esque City of the Future – or the assets of a post-apocalyptic military force.  These new constructions are dreamlike and aspirational but also threatening, with a military or bomb-like aspect.  

Simon Kaan’s performative work The Asian invites visitors to the gallery to have lunch with him via Skype, utilising a technological medium to engage in the traditional daily ritual of sitting together at a table, eating and talking.  For the duration of the exhibition, Sanderson Contemporary Art will become a virtual and literal extension of The Asian, a restaurant located in Dunedin, Kaan’s home town.  “Kaan uses the Asian as a site for cultural archaeology, where everything from the food to the paintings on the walls reference the artist’s past and provoke self exploration.  Kaan asks: ‘am I at home here?’ … Communication is at the centre of this work, both with the new and fractured avenues introduced by technology and as the substance of the artwork.”[2]

[1]Brit Bunkley

[2]Janine Parkinson, Blue Oyster Gallery