Automatic Art (London)
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 - Wed, 10 Sep 2014
Venue: GV Art gallery, London
Automatic Art: Human and Machine Processes That Make Art
Exhibition : 4 July until 26 July 2014
Private View : Thursday 4 July, 6pm – 9pm
GV Art gallery, London, 49 Chiltern Street, Marylebone, London W1U 6LY
Sponsored by De Montfort University
Artists include: Dominic Boreham, boredomresearch, Stephen Bell, Paul Brown, Sean Clark, Harold Cohen, Ernest Edmonds, Michael Kidner, William Latham, Kenneth Martin, Stephen Scrivener and Susan Tebby.
"The technique of any art consists of a language and a logic" Paul Cézanne
An artist's "language" consists of many elements - colours, lines, shapes. The "logic" is the set of rules developed by the artist for selecting those elements and putting them together.
Over the last 50 years British artists have been pioneering Systems Art and Computer Art. These artists create artworks using personal rules or by writing computer programs that generate visual forms. The artworks in the exhibition range from paintings and drawings to computer-based displays that evolve dynamically through time. All of them use some form of organized static or changing structure. The art may be abstract but it is full of life.
Key points:
• The exhibition provides a survey of 50 years of British art that uses the structures of language and logic, including the Systems Group exhibition of 1972-3 and current Computer Artists.
• The artists showing in the exhibition use rules or algorithms in making their artworks.
• The exhibition has strong connections with De Montfort University, previously Leicester Polytechnic, where many of the artists have worked or studied.
By 1969 Ernest Edmonds (curator of the show) was already writing computer programs as part of his art, first using the single mainframe computer that Leicester Polytechnic owned at that time.
The Arts Council exhibition 'Systems' toured in 1972-3 and included Steele, as well as Malcolm Hughes, Peter Lowe and Michael Kidner. None of these artists wrote computer programs, but their art was a strong influence on those who did. Also in the early 1970s Harold Cohen, already a highly respected artist, started his lifelong quest of writing and developing his computer program 'Aaron' that automatically produced drawings and paintings, most recently in partnership with the artist himself.
In 1973 Malcolm Hughes established the Experimental Department at the Slade, where he installed a computer. Artists who studied there are in this exhibition: Paul Brown, Stephen Bell, Stephen Scrivener and Dominic Boreham. Several of these went on to Leicester Polytechnic, now De Montfort University (DMU), where Systems Artists, Colin Jones and Susan Tebby taught, as did Ernest Edmonds.
The Systems and the Computer artists overlap and have many connections - writing computer programs is an extension of the Systems approach and one that provides new opportunities afforded by the technology itself. Paul Brown, William Latham and the collaboration 'boredomresearch' are inspired by models of growth in natural forms. Sean Clark and Ernest Edmonds explore time-based dynamic and interactive forms.
Links
More information: http://gvart.co.uk
