CONCRETE PLASTIC

LAM GALLERY, LOS ANGELES, 15 - 30 OCTOBER 2016


UNTITLED (THEY LIVE, WE SLEEP) 2016
Gloss paint and thermochromic ink

THE THING 2016
Single channel video

DESERT OF THE REAL

ARTLACUNA, LONDON, 1 - 4 DECEMBER 2016

You go into an office and sit at a desk, but maybe it is a fake job. Your real job is shopping. The true factories of our time are the shopping malls. That is where the real hard work is done. After all, what better way to forget about the horrors of reality – conflict, live executions, drowning migrants, the threat of a terrorist attack on your “way of life”, the economy – than to throw one's self into the acquisition of material goods? There you can stroll the aisles, hypnotised by the sheen and lustre into forgetting all your troubles and worries. Cheerfully freeing yourself from the burden of your hard-earned money. You can transform yourself, your lives. You will be richer – even though you are poorer by having spent your money.

Desert of the Real presents two new works from Chris Cawkwell.

Using footage from George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), Dawn of the Consumer (2016) takes the viewpoint of four “survivors” navigating the material plentitude of the modern shopping centre. Observing consumer culture before succumbing, and falling victim to their own material desires.

The Thing (2016), a time lapse of Sea anemone’s mindlessly consuming and jostling over space, presents capitalist consumer culture in it’s truest form – a monstrous plastic entity capable of metabolising and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact. Audio from John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is used to soundtrack the brutality and horror of consumption, as the organism assimilates other sentient life; whilst subliminal messages pay homage to Carpenter’s cult classic They Live (1988).

SENSORAMA

BOHUNK INSTITUTE, NOTTINGHAM, 15 MARCH - 5 APRIL 2013

We live in an age of excess and over-consumption; an urban sprawl of odours, tastes and sights that bombard and harass – its material plenitude, the crowdedness of it all conjoined to dull our sensory faculties. The age of the consumer. An age where anything can become a commodity and sold, if there is a willing buyer.

Sensorama, (derived from Morton Heilig’s 1957 multi-sensory machine of the same name), explores the relationship between global marketing and consupmtion; as brands appeal to consumers senses and social sensibilities, in a society where people are identified more through their consumption of goods than their individualality. Don’t have the latest iPhone? How can you be expected to access the latest product information!? Sensorama critiques the social systems and processes which operate around us, highlighting the rate at which products are consumed and how even smells can, and have been, commodified – all the while overwhemlming the viewers senses of touch, taste, sight and smell.

BUY THE WORLD A COKE 2012

Initially conceived as a series of interventions on Coca Cola bottles being sold in public spaces; QR codes printed on the bottles linked to a web page displaying an online counter, continuously counting up at the rate at which Coca Cola products are bought and consumed on a global scale per second. Other bottles displayed information and subversive messaging on consumer culture.

“The act through which the Coke bottles are bought and consumed (in which the QR link is destroyed and text made illegible) is mimicked within the gallery space; audience members are invited to take a cool refreshing Coca Cola from the fridge – located within the gallery – and, either, leave the product and QR code intact or use the bottle opener located upon the gallery wall and consume the Coca Cola that helps comprise the QR link and text."

AIR BANK 2012 - PRESENT
An ongoing archive of breath.

AIR BANK 2012 - PRESENT

In 2005 Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s “air” sold on eBay for £340. Air Bank invites the gallery goer to commodify their own air by breathing into an air tight jar – labelling and signing – and placing back on a shelf as part of a growing archive. Ultimately the collection will be placed on eBay and auctioned, in the hope that value will have increased if a particpant has become synonymous with fame/wealth within the public consciousness – either as a celebrity or public figure.

THE SMELL OF MONEY 2012

Early concept for The Smell of Money – 12 smells released into the gallery space in twenty minute intervals once activated through motion.

THE SMELL OF MONEY 2013

In 1991 Dr. Alan Hirsh introduced two different odours – both rated as having positive connotations in a prior preference study – into different areas of the gaming floor of a Las Vegas Hilton. The odours were strong enough to be easily perceived, but not strong enough to become overpowering. Odourisation occurred over a period of 48 hours; one area where an odour was introduced saw a 45 percent increase in the amount of money spent at the machines compared to odor-free zones. The gaming industry and retailers immediately took note of this.

Despite Hirsh's research being widely discredited since, (he never revealed the jackpot smell), it heralded an era of manipulative smell technology utilised by companies in the hopes of making consumers spend more.

Our surroundings are scented to manipulate how we perceive them. Samsung fills it's stores with a distinctive honeydew melon smell. Supermarkets 'bake' (read, 'reheat') bread on site. The British Airways business class lounge at Heathrow Airport is infused with the smell of freshly cut grass and the salty odour of the sea. And following complaints that the later model Rolls-Royces didn't have the same smell as their forerunners, the car's coachbuilders developed a chemical solution that would replicate the nasal illusion of driving the world's most luxurious car. The result - 'Eau de Rolls-Royce 1965 Silver Cloud'.

The Smell of Money takes 12 smells linked with such technology, and high street retail, and periodically pumps them into the gallery space – the individual odours mixing, becoming overwhelming and counteractive to their original purpose.

WONDERSITE

EMBASSY OF JAPAN, LONDON, 24 MAY - 12 JUNE 2012

Work made in response to PM12 residency, Tokyo Wondersite.

SEEING THE BLOSSOM 2012

Seeing the Blossom plays with the contrast between traditional and modern aspects of contemporary Japense life. Using Omikuji (御神籤), the written divination about a person's near future, juxtaposed against a staple of childhood – the dispensation of sweets from a gumball machine – Seeing the Blossom alludes to the trivialisation of traditional values and customs in an ever modernised Japan. Where customs are commodified for the purposes of tourism.

The title of the work is derived from Melvyn Bragg's celebrated 1994 interview with Dennis Potter – then dying of cancer – touching upon the positive aspects of what could be seen as a negative, whilst referencing the 'blossoming' branches of the tree located in the gallery space as viewers leave behind bad fortune or magnify good fortune by folding and tying the Omikuji (御神籤) to the branches.

"During March 2012 a group of ten Masters students, studying on a variety of courses at Camberwell College of Arts, Chelsea College of Art & Design and Wimbledon College of Art - collectively CCW - were based at Tokyo Wonder Site’s residency building in Aoyama, Tokyo. They used it as a point from which to explore the city and to research artistic, design and cultural precedents that would extend and inform their working practices. This exhibition brings together work produced by CCW in response to their time in Tokyo and their visit to sites affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake."

TSUKIJI FISH MARKET 2012
Footage from research trip to Tsukiji fish market, Tokyo.

PM12 TOKYO WONDERSITE – New Community Design 2012

A month long residency in Tokyo, centred around an 8 day workshop and exhibition exploring themes of New Community Design. Outcomes responded to positive aspects in times of disaster and the formation of community through interaction and play.