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Pictures Not Homes

Pictures Not Homes
Pictures Not Homes
In ‘PICTURES NOT HOMES’, Ian Dawson and Louisa Minkin assemble in the gallery material documentation of the urban regeneration process enabled by new-imaging technologies; the wreckage of place salvaged as file types. The exhibition title is a reversal of the slogan ‘HOMES NOT PICTURES’ daubed by protesters across ‘social’ artwork on a demolition site hoarding. This exhibition wanders about appearance and dwelling, through pictures and homes, divisions and productions, data-sets and concrete abstractions. Regeneration is a key word here, standing in for varied processes of optimism and despair. It points towards a yearning for better futures whilst simultaneously masking dispossession: a byword for social cleaning and clearing, a logic of ‘bettering.’ The current regeneration cycle involves artists repopulating the site as part of the gentrification process, transforming the image of the locale as new forms of dispersal architecture are manifested. This is a question of home as frontline, the ends of utopia, the mining of cultural capital.

In the spring of 2014 Dawson and Minkin got access to Taplow House, a South East London estate block, before the bulldozers. A row of forgotten shops: a cab-office, a laundrette and a butcher’s, boarded up for 30 years. Taplow House is itself named after Taeppa’s Low, an imposing 7th Century burial mound in countryside far west of the Aylesbury Estate, an invocation of a phantasmatic homeland among the prefabricated concrete slabs and raised walkways. Over a ten-day period they attempted to apply contemporary archaeological recording practices to the site; new technologies such as photogrammetry, reflectance transformation imaging [RTI] and 3D laser scanning. Documenting how memories are written into the world with more or less intent, more or less duration: the stratigraphy of discarded litter accumulating in the corner of rooms, a hand-print on a burnt out wall. 'Technology is where we in the west preserve our ancestors’ writes Sean Cubitt.

In ‘PICTURES NOT HOMES’ Dawson and Minkin will present the results of their partial excavation, 3D prints and scans will be shown as fragments, as a time capsule. This is a documentary project, informative of the site, processes and technologies at work. It is also a way to frame questions of what pictures do: questions of capacities, anxiety and ambivalence. Here is an environment of barricades, sandbags, file types and data as ruin. Belated understandings brought about by lumpen or ‘dirty’ misuse of the technologies. This exhibition will explore the double processes of media where with every picture the viewer is propelled ever further away from the subject, a double movement of capturing and creation occurring with every image and data compilation. ‘We can never directly see what is true, {..} we look at it only in reflection’ Goethe said whilst grappling with these very same issues.
Art, Art today, Archaeology, archaeological data, installation, 3D printing, Image processing, sculpture, print media, printmaking
University of Southampton
Dawson, Ian
3b598f16-b350-4fbc-89aa-ef92eba6abfa
Minkin, Louisa
110d6201-300e-4b20-8cc7-23e6b9ba7737
Dawson, Ian
3b598f16-b350-4fbc-89aa-ef92eba6abfa
Minkin, Louisa
110d6201-300e-4b20-8cc7-23e6b9ba7737

Dawson, Ian and Minkin, Louisa (2017) Pictures Not Homes. Pictures Not Homes, The Winchester Gallery, University of Southampton, Winchester, United Kingdom.

Record type: Art Design Item

Abstract

In ‘PICTURES NOT HOMES’, Ian Dawson and Louisa Minkin assemble in the gallery material documentation of the urban regeneration process enabled by new-imaging technologies; the wreckage of place salvaged as file types. The exhibition title is a reversal of the slogan ‘HOMES NOT PICTURES’ daubed by protesters across ‘social’ artwork on a demolition site hoarding. This exhibition wanders about appearance and dwelling, through pictures and homes, divisions and productions, data-sets and concrete abstractions. Regeneration is a key word here, standing in for varied processes of optimism and despair. It points towards a yearning for better futures whilst simultaneously masking dispossession: a byword for social cleaning and clearing, a logic of ‘bettering.’ The current regeneration cycle involves artists repopulating the site as part of the gentrification process, transforming the image of the locale as new forms of dispersal architecture are manifested. This is a question of home as frontline, the ends of utopia, the mining of cultural capital.

In the spring of 2014 Dawson and Minkin got access to Taplow House, a South East London estate block, before the bulldozers. A row of forgotten shops: a cab-office, a laundrette and a butcher’s, boarded up for 30 years. Taplow House is itself named after Taeppa’s Low, an imposing 7th Century burial mound in countryside far west of the Aylesbury Estate, an invocation of a phantasmatic homeland among the prefabricated concrete slabs and raised walkways. Over a ten-day period they attempted to apply contemporary archaeological recording practices to the site; new technologies such as photogrammetry, reflectance transformation imaging [RTI] and 3D laser scanning. Documenting how memories are written into the world with more or less intent, more or less duration: the stratigraphy of discarded litter accumulating in the corner of rooms, a hand-print on a burnt out wall. 'Technology is where we in the west preserve our ancestors’ writes Sean Cubitt.

In ‘PICTURES NOT HOMES’ Dawson and Minkin will present the results of their partial excavation, 3D prints and scans will be shown as fragments, as a time capsule. This is a documentary project, informative of the site, processes and technologies at work. It is also a way to frame questions of what pictures do: questions of capacities, anxiety and ambivalence. Here is an environment of barricades, sandbags, file types and data as ruin. Belated understandings brought about by lumpen or ‘dirty’ misuse of the technologies. This exhibition will explore the double processes of media where with every picture the viewer is propelled ever further away from the subject, a double movement of capturing and creation occurring with every image and data compilation. ‘We can never directly see what is true, {..} we look at it only in reflection’ Goethe said whilst grappling with these very same issues.

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More information

Published date: 2017
Additional Information: In Pictures Not Homes Ian Dawson and Louisa Minkin present a variety of exploratory artworks that include 3D prints, videos and digital artefacts. These are the result of experimentation with new imaging technologies used by The Cultural Heritage industries. Through collaboration with the University of Southampton's Archaeology Dept. Dawson and Minkin have explored how art practice can adopt these new technologies. This body of work was first presented at ASC Gallery London (2015), and has gone on to be exhibited at Annihilation Event, Lethaby Gallery London (2017), Gestures of Resistance, Athens (2017)
Venue - Dates: Pictures Not Homes, The Winchester Gallery, University of Southampton, Winchester, United Kingdom, 2017-01-12 - 2017-01-28
Keywords: Art, Art today, Archaeology, archaeological data, installation, 3D printing, Image processing, sculpture, print media, printmaking
Organisations: Graphics, Fine Art & Media, Winchester School of Art, Archaeology

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 411645
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/411645
PURE UUID: 1878a4df-725d-45bb-aa09-14e9b323aacf
ORCID for Ian Dawson: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-3695-8582

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 21 Jun 2017 16:32
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:44

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Contributors

Artist: Ian Dawson ORCID iD
Artist: Louisa Minkin

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