Garageland 16: Machines has two guest editors, Eric Butcher and Simón Granell, the co-curators of a national touring exhibition – ‘A Machine Aesthetic’ (which starts its run at TheGallery, Arts University Bournemouth in January 2014). They explain some of the ideas behind their project – ideas that have fed into this issue and have been expanded upon by the regular Garageland editorial team...
'From the first daubings of pre-historic caves, through the invention of the camera obscura and ready-made oil paint in tubes to the use of digital media, artists have been among the first to embrace and exploit new technologies. The focus of A Machine Aesthetic, however, is at once narrower and broader, concerning itself specifically with the notion and implications of ‘mechanisation’ in its widest sense in contemporary art.
'Since the late 1950s/early 60s there have evolved a plethora of artistic practices that involve the manufacture of machines to produce the artistic 'product'. Where Jean Tinguely led the way, artists as diverse as Rebecca Horn, Chris Burden, Roxy Paine and Damien Hirst followed. While earlier analyses have tended to conceive of the machine in a narrow sense, A Machine Aesthetic proposes a different perspective, achieved by consideration of the full range of artistic practices that embrace both subtle and sophisticated notions of mechanisation.'
'A Machine Aesthetic' is at the heart of this issue but their are also many other machines and ideas about mechanisation included that take in but stretch beyond the bounds of contemporary art, from Jeremy Deller's ‘All that is solid melts into air’ to failing movie machines and the political implications of production from William Morris to 3D printers. See all the contents here.
Garageland XVI is supported by text + work, TheGallery, Arts University Bournemouth |
