Adrian scrivener’s sculpture, Logoland 5, is influenced by our modern day urban environments and verbose signage that shout at us through logos, branding, advertising, traffic instructions - all which direct our movements and communication. Each logo is fictionally constructed by the artist, printed onto card, and arranged into an invented city that makes a poignant commentary on a city like Dubai which is an invented city in the middle East - perpetually being shaped and branded - even if the work is influenced by the Far East.
Aron Hill’s pencil drawings of birds and self enclosed buildings apply a scientific or analytic methodology to collapse nature with architecture. His clinical use of empty background draws us to closely inspect and learn that these birds are fictionalized, while the buildings provide no access and hold our memories captive.
Matt Calderwood uses what seems to be a simple documentary style in his videos that show us the inherent failure of utopia, and the inevitability of instability. He tests us and himself by creating structures that do not function. He both pays tribute and gives tongue-in-cheek nod to 20th century architecture with the construction and international destruction of a structure made from two concrete slabs and four wine glasses in Ground Experiment #1
Peter Macdonald draws highly detailed landscapes from subconsciously ingrained moments that are worked through by repeating small marks open the picture plane. He shows us a farmed or a controlled land with faint tire tracks that indicate human presence - these are clearly areas of surveillance.
Shaan Syed is an artist who comes from a figurative tradition, has removed all narrative in place of more formal concerns of depth, color luminosity in order to examine the influence of the effect of the image by removing it altogether. Instead we are left with a space of potential (something left wanting), and they in turn become landscapes. He leaves us with the flash of the bulb, the empty red carpet moment; like Hill’s birds, there is a sense of spectacle minus the star attraction.
