Autosuggest ABC

Autosuggest ABC2013
Oil on wooden alphabet blocks
3 x 3 x 3 cm each

This playful work, comprises of 26 wooden alphabet blocks, each representing a letter of the alphabet. An experiment was carried out through the course of the first 2 months of 2013, starting on te 1^st of January, where each letter of the alphabet was typed into the Google images search box. The top 5 suggestions (based on popular search terms) from each letter were taken from the drop down list, and an image from the first page of the word’s search result page is painted on the sides of the block with the corresponding letter.

The work thus acts as a snapshot of the zeitgeist of contemporary society, and of the things, people, places, brands and issues which the majority of society finds most “searchworthy”. It takes these entities, that anyone would find faintly familiar, and the images that children grow up with, and preserves them in oil paint and layers of varnish, and presents them as toy to be played with, to be explored, browsed, thrown around and closely inspected. I am not presenting the viewer with what I want them to see, but rather giving them exactly what they want to see.

"Autosuggest ABC" made it to the top 100 of the 2013 ABSA l'atelier awards.

It will be on exhibition at the Association of Arts Pretoria until 6 April 2013

 

In retrospect

Being given a new Holga green lomo camera by a friend, I think back to the projects I have done with analog media.

and even further back...

As a child I always had my purple film camera with me, but had to think long and hard before I took a shot, whether the image was worth the R2 development cost.

I miss those times, and the excitement I felt on the way to CNA to pick them up.

I made these in 2011.
They contain most of my purple camera shots, some pinhole negatives I took in 2009, and some discarded test strips I salvaged from the darkroom dustbin.

 

 

The idea was to create a mechanical digital image, from fragments of analog photographs, that is completely dependent on the light source in order to explore the crossover from one way of thinking to the other and the relationship between digital and analog.

 

The colour of every pixel is dependent on the angle it is placed at. Hues vary when light from the back shines through gaps made by more angled tiles.

Miniatures

Recently I have started a contemporary take on the age old art of Miniature portrait painting. What intrigues me the most is the inevitable distortion that occurs. Faces become obscure, and likeness gets lost.

I get lost inside the fictional miniature world when I paint them.

size: 3 x 3 cm

Farewell

On the train

Planning the exhibition

Breakfast

Hippy

Morning train

Night out

Guitarist

Hello

I am currently working on my artsit blog/portfolio.

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View my 2013 page for examples of my recent work.