, The Lowry, Greater Manchester, UK, to 25 February
WHAT鈥橲 life without whimsy, humour 鈥� and a dollop of horror? Not to mention unexpectedly interesting answers to what feel like increasingly unpromising questions about the near future.
In hosting Humansbeingdigital, Greater Manchester鈥檚 Lowry gallery is again grappling with the digital, this time with what it calls the 鈥渢ouchpoint between human being and being digital鈥�. By now, the curators have no real need to make any kind of big deal about digital technology. Artists always work with the 鈥渟tuff鈥� of their time, and for a while now, our stuff has been all about running out of human runway and floating off into electronic bubbleworld.
Advertisement
Just pop next door, where pictures by the real Lowry 鈥� L.S. that is 鈥� reveal the difference. There, the artist of industrial Britain used a limited palette of oils or made charcoal sketches to capture a dirty, intricate, vibrant landscape. It is a physical world. In the second decade of the 21st century, our world is about the image and the screen; it is ceasing to be physical or readable in simple ways.
Nye Thompson鈥檚 Backdoored makes this plain. It is a work with images she changes for each show. In a mock surveillance room, 20 screens are mounted on a wall covered in bamboo wallpaper. The dingy, often hard-to-see images come from footage captured by security webcams, collected by an algorithm scouring search engines for unprotected feeds.
It is about 鈥渟elf-surveillance, particularly in an age of increasing state surveillance鈥�. 鈥淭he images I collect form a kind of social document,鈥� she says, adding that she chooses images with 鈥渋mplied narrative qualities, images that make you wonder why someone has chosen to watch a particular location. Behind every decision to set up a camera there is a backstory, although we are unlikely to ever know it.鈥�
鈥淔or all the prying, we know less about this real world than we do about L.S. Lowry鈥檚 street scenes鈥�
And that, for me, is the point. One screen shows a white horse in a room, no wait, is it a garage? Is the horse real? And anyway, why is it there? In another image, girls are working in a kiosk in鈥� Portugal? There鈥檚 a pound sign just visible, so it has to be somewhere that uses British currency, but that doesn鈥檛 feel right. Elsewhere, a lump moves in a darkened bedroom. As for those odd dustbins鈥�
This may be the stuff of surveillance nightmares, but it is also far more complicated. In an odd way, we are protected by these multiple readings, the forever incomplete narratives. Just how much of our own stories are really revealed here? For all the invasion and prying, we know less about this real world of real people than we do about any of L.S. Lowry鈥檚 street or factory scenes.
There鈥檚 an echo of his near- disappeared world in the show鈥檚 most disturbing work, Machine With Hair Caught in It, by Ujoo+Limheeyoung. Here, shiny cogs of various sizes twirl locks of shiny dark hair as they move, in some dreadful dance. It reminds you of the Japanese horror movie Ring: you could easily wake in a 3 am cold sweat at the thought.
Perhaps the only thing left is to buy a part of the coming meltdown in the form of a work called Apocalypse. Artists Thomson and Craighead say it is 鈥渁 complex fragrance based on olfactory materials detailed in the Book of Revelation as it appears in the King James Bible鈥�. They worked with perfumer Euan McCall to develop what they call a 鈥渃hemical depiction of biblical end times鈥�. As I sniffed a sample, a gallery assistant observed darkly: 鈥淭here鈥檚 an undertow of burning!鈥�
Apparently, you can buy it for 拢400 in 50 limited edition 100 millilitre bottles. End times indeed.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭he stuff of our time鈥�
