Event

QUT Art Museum presents Foundations edge: artists and technology, a new exhibition that explores the work of artists who deconstruct and rework commercial technology. These artists embrace retro and obsolete technologies to move past our fixation with the 'new'.

Foundations edge: artists and technology presents work by artists who challenge the intended use of technological devices, pushing them to realise their potential as an art medium.

Featured artists in this exhibition are Michael Candy, Lawrence English, Benjamin Forster, Caitlin Franzmann, Ross Manning and Ken + Julia Yonetani.

"The artists have rebelled against using high end commercial technology, they are not seduced by its fetishised aesthetic or the desire to keep up with the newest gadgets." said Vanessa Van Ooyen, Senior Curator, QUT Art Museum.

"It's GFC art. They are experimenting with technology, using immediately accessible material in order to demonstrate that big ideas are achievable with the resources at hand. The exhibition raises questions about art and technology, and the role the artist plays in providing and stimulating debate in our culture."

The exhibition features experiments in drawing, sound, light, optics, movement and space through the deconstruction of everyday devices such as printers, record players, televisions, projectors, mobile phones and cameras. The works investigate the role of the artist in art making and the aesthetics formed out of the interaction between different media. Highlights include a drawing machine created by Benjamin Forster, which has been programmed to draw in a way that is distinctly human, without appearing automated.

As previous representatives of Australia at the Venice Biennale (2009), Ken + Julia Yonetani's art installations have attracted international acclaim and drawn attention to environmental issues. Crystal Palace: The great exhibition of the works of industry of all nuclear nations is a provocative response to Japan's horrific Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in 2011. The installation presents chandeliers made from Uranium glass beads, illuminated with ultraviolet lights to indicate the presence of radiation. Referencing London's Great Exhibition of 1851, a celebration of modern technology and industrial power, each chandelier represents the nuclear output of different industrial nations.

If we are to believe as Marshall McLuhan suggested in the sixties, "Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen", then this exhibition is sure to create debate.

Date

16 March 2013 - 26 May 2013

Time

Tue to Fri, 10am to 5pm. Sat & Sun, 12pm to 4pm

Location

QUT Art Museum

Cost

Free

Organisation

QUT Art Museum

Info

QUT Art Museum

Phone

07 3138 5370

Email

artmuseum@qut.edu.au

URL

QUT Art Museum