My Mother Was a Computer

Curated by Amba Sayal-Bennett

10 October - 19 November 2022

Johannes Bosisio, Mark Corfield-Moore, William Darrell, László von Dohnányi, Emily Kraus, Garrett Pruter, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Rafał Zajko

Indigo+Madder is thrilled to present My Mother Was a Computer, a group exhibition bringing together works by eight London-based artists to explore notions of agency, subjectivity, and representation through a machinic lens. The show borrows its title from a book of the same name by N. Katherine Hayles, which examines how the lines that once separated analogue from digital, old from new technologies, and humans from machines have become blurred. Within this context, the exhibition considers the complex transactions, entanglements, and exchanges that take place within human and non-human assemblages, and who and what is produced by them.

Human-machine relations are central to the work in the show. Zajko’s terracotta Threadbearer resembles a part of ancient machinery. Through a cessation of its action, the viewer is left to contemplate its purpose. Recalling the hours spent watching his Grandparents at work within the textile factories of Białystok, Zajko describes a fascination with how workers could communicate with machinery through a single press of a button. Here concatenations between bodies and machines involved in production on an industrial scale are explored at the site of their interaction, through the logic of the interface. Bosisio investigates what happens when these relations are liberated from mass modes of production. Evoking images from Ballard’s Crash and informed by the industrial sounds of Berlin’s hedonistic club culture, Untitled, micro series, presents an intimate rendering of smooth and twisted metal surfaces mediated by desire; a blurring of boundaries that is similarly explored in Sayal-Bennett and Darrell’s work.

Dioptrique is a digital drawing crafted in laser-cut steel and printed plaster. Evolving though an ongoing process of human-machine engagement and feedback, Sayal-Bennett considers the hybrid language that develops from her use of computer-aided design programs. Such programs act as a set of restrictions - parameters that determine possibilities of expression. Rather than being passive tools, she is interested in their agency and how their language inflects the everyday. Darrell’s hypnotic work occupies an ambiguous state between fear and seduction. Feeding on the attention of the viewer, his mechanical organisms possess mesmerising qualities, using biomimicry to trigger motion responses in parts of the brain where our animal ancestry still lingers. Historically the salamander was believed to be born from fire as it was sometimes observed emerging from burning logs. As a mummified newt swirls around 3D printed flames, The Salamander’s Cauldron reflects on the relevance of this fable for the climate crisis - a cauldron of our own making circulated by myths of resilience.

Natural-technological constructions also feature in von Dohnányi’s A bunch of wires in the form of a bird’s nest or cable network. Von Dohnányi’s work emerges from a systematic painting process that integrates analogue and digital methods. Applying paint by hand and using tape to prevent overlap between the stencilled sections, he operates like a human printer, a process that he describes as ‘technological mimesis’. A bunch of wires is dotted with exposed canvas glitches, moments of non-alignment borne from inevitable moments of human inaccuracy. Whilst von Dohnányi uses an older medium to adopt features of a more recent one, Pruter uses digital methods to edit and refashion film, an earlier media form. The Birds (no. 125165) is part of an ongoing work in which Pruter redacts the birds from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Created through a meticulous process of frame-by-frame digital erasure, Pruter reconstructs the scenes to fill the void left by the birds. Simulating the grain and soft lens inherent to film, this practice of erasure through reconstruction lends itself to painting.

Kraus works inside a human-painting machine comprised of a canvas loop stretched over a metal cubic scaffold. As the canvas passes through the machine, she holds the memory of surrounding marks to inform her application of paint. The repetitions and variations produced document a choreography of movement within a rigid system. Corefield-Moore uses a loom to create his textile works. Often considered a precursor to modern computing, the loom represented a revolution in human-machine interaction, as weaving was the first trade to be almost entirely mechanised through its use of binary punch cards. Utilising a distinctive technique based on ikat, a process that he learnt in northern Thailand, Corefield-Moore’s woven work adapts the traditional method of binding and dyeing by painting directly onto the warp threads. Winding the threads on the loom distorts the image resulting in a unique glitchiness, or what he terms a ‘fizzy heat’, reflecting his interest in the instability of mnemonic images. Glitches, disturbances, and non-coherence alert us to an understanding of image as process. This confusion of boundaries and blurring of forms are threads which run throughout the works in the exhibition. The artists reflect on how we can understand, and what can emerge from, the human-machinic encounter at a time when technological advancement is accelerating faster than ever before.

Amba Sayal-Bennett (b. 1991, London) lives and works in London. She received her BFA from Oxford University and her MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art. She was awarded her PhD in Art Practice and Learning from Goldsmiths and has published her practice-based research with Tate Papers. Recent exhibitions and awards include Geometries of Difference, Somerset House, London (2022); The Derek Hill Scholarship, British School at Rome, Rome (2022); Synthesis, Saatchi Gallery, London (2022); and Tomorrow 2021, White Cube, London (2021).

Emily Kraus (b. 1995, New York City) lives and works in London. She received her Painting MA from the Royal College of Art in London (2022) and a BA in Religious Studies from Kenyon College (2017). Recent exhibitions include A Body of Work, Grove Collective, London 2022; and Shadows, The Stable, S-chanf, Switzerland 2022. Kraus’ works are in the collections of the Royal College of Art and the Simon Nixon Foundation.

Johannes Bosisio (b.1994, Cavalese, Italy) lives and works in London. He received his DIPLOMA Fine Art Painting from Weissensee School of Art Berlin (2019) and MA Fine Art Painting at the Royal College of Art and Design in 2022). Selected group exhibitions include Summer Show, Eve Leibe Gallery, London, 2022; Split Open, Split Gallery, London, 2022; Groupshow, 104 Gallery, Tokyo, 2022; Leasing Vol. 1, Autohaus, Kassel, 2021; and Practices for Responsiveness, Galleria Doris Ghetta, Ortisei, 2021 amongst others. Recent scholarships and residencies include: Artist Inside scholarship, Berlin, 2021 and Spazio Speciale residency Program, Palermo, 2019.

László von Dohnányi (b.1990, Hamburg, Germany) lives and works in London. He received a BFA from the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford in 2012, a BSc in Architecture from University College London in 2015 and an MA Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2021. László has exhibited in London, Hamburg, Berlin and Budapest. His most recent solo show was The Shadow Hand at Annka Kultys Gallery, London in 2021.

Garrett Pruter (b. 1987, Los Angeles, USA) is an American artist living and working in London. He received his MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2020) and a BFA from Parsons School of Design (2010). Recent exhibitions include The Birds, Trafalgar Avenue, London, 2022; Picture House, Brigade Gallery, Copenhagen; Cacotopia, Annka Kultys Gallery, London; Generation Loss, Galerie Virginie Louvet, Paris, Traces, Judith Charlies Gallery, New York; and Scripted Spaces, Martos Gallery, Los Angeles.

Mark Corfield-Moore (b. 1988, Bangkok, Thailand) lives and works in London. He graduated from the Royal Academy Schools with a postgraduate diploma in 2018, and a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2015. Recent exhibitions include Galerie Alzueta (solo), Barcelona, 2022; Cob Gallery (solo), London 2021; Britta Rettberg, Munich, 2021; New Art Centre, Salisbury, 2020; Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (Online Viewing Room), London, 2020; Choi & Lager, Cologne, 2019. He has shown at institutions both in the U.K. and in Europe including the Institut Tessin, Paris, 2022; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, 2020; Jerwood Space, London, 2019 and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2018. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Jerwood Makers Award and in 2018 was awarded the Tiffany & Co. x Outset Studiomakers Prize.

William Darrell (b. 1989, London) lives and works between London and Paris. He received his BA Fine Art from the Edinburgh College of Art and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art. Recent exhibitions include Destructive mollusc, Haze Projects, London, 2022; Transformation. Jason Platform, Coopenhagen, 2022; and Being Amongst Within Without, Safehouse, London 2022 amongst others. His recent commissions include an installation displayed on the Art Block in Selfridges London in association with Yorkshire Sculpture Park and a collaboration with Louis Vuitton for the window displays in their Maison stores globally.

Rafał Zajko (b. 1988, Białystok, Poland) lives and works in London, UK. He received his MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art, London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include Amber Waves II, Galeria Fran Reus, Palma, 2022; Song to the Siren, Cooke Latham Gallery, London, 2022; Amber Waves at Public Gallery, London 2021; and Resuscitation, Castor Projects, London, 2020 amongst others. Group exhibitions including shows at London Open 2022, Whitechapel Gallery, London; New Contemporaries 2021, South London Gallery; X Museum, Beijing, 2020 and Bold Tendencies, London, 2020 amongst several others. Rafal Zajko is currently working on a public commission with Wysing Arts Centre and St. Peters School in Cambridge (2023).

SELECTED WORKS