Elegant Degradation

Stonehouse, jonathan, 2016, Single channel video, 3min 4sec, drith.co.uk

Aston Creus, demesnE, 2017, Pine needles, cast iron fireplace grate, jailbroken Kindles, looped digital scene from modified version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08, dimensions variable

Akil Ahamat, Bubblebath{soft-spoken}{crinkling}, 2015, Towel, concrete, styrofoam, slippers, single channel video, 68 sec. Dimensions variable

Grace Blake and L/HT/T/TT, Lex Imperium; Expansion, Expropriation, Establishment, 2017, Mixed media, dimensions variable

Aidan Koch, Viewer, 2016, Graphite, pastel and gouache, dimensions variable

Alex Kiers and Claire Finneran, ASMRnDnB, Cockatoo Island, 2016, single channel video, 2 min, 52 sec, Made with help from Underbelly Arts Sydney, Waverly Studios, Firstdraft Gallery.

Claire Finneran, Nail Artist, 2015, Enamel, ink, false fingernails, glue, plexiglass, 53 x 44cm

Claire Finneran, After Gary Larson (Cellfie), 2015, Enamel, ink, 32 x 21cm

Jannah Quill, I'll meet you here, 2017, 3D engine, latex print, voice recording, dimensions variable

Richard Phillips, Stage (i), 2017, UV print on acrylic, digital print, 74 x 104cm

Rachael Archibald, interior spiritual naturalism (view #1), 2017, Digital print on silk chiffon, wooden frame, video animation, 4 min 50 sec, 91 x 54cm

With much of contemporary culture in late capitalist societies now greatly consolidated by personal computing devices, our experience of the material is largely deferred in favour of more immediate, digital representations online. This relationship also extends to these physical devices, with manufacturers often muting their device’s problematic, material history. These devices often operate on a system of infrastructure that exists elsewhere, as artist Ed Atkins observes, “every “cloud” has a rusting, heaving, scorched lining” (Atkins, 2014). Elegant Degradation responds to this context, examining how this disjuncture between the material and the digital in the viewing, displaying and distributing of content has brought about a gap in contemporary experience that is engendered by anxiety.

In engineering the term “elegant degradation” refers to the gradual deterioration of a mechanical system, that through constant use and without any outwards evidence of decay, catastrophically fails. This exhibition poses this as a possible model for the current disjuncture between the material and the digital, bringing together a selection of artists whose practices reveal how anxiety manifests in human desire and affect. The works in the show engage with photographic representation, online relaxation, geopolitics and digital representations of space across a variety of mediums including painting, video, sound, sculpture, design and installation.

By bringing together these varied practices from both national and international artists, we hope to explore how anxiety manifests in the digital. The different approaches to anxiety represented in this exhibition critically engage with the contemporary digital condition through conversation and conflict with one another.

Atkins, Ed, “Digital Reflex, Avery Singer and Ed Atkins respond to Texte zur Kunst”, Texte Zur Kunst, Issue No. 95 / “Art vs. Image”, September 2014

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