Messy Assemblages

Messy Assemblages offers an open set of activities and curation to ask what happens when objects move from the physical to the digital. It seeks to explore what we might call the ‘phygital’ nexus. New data sets create new artefacts and these digital files move, mutate and shift themselves, dispersing, colonising and rematerializing in complex and unforeseen relationships. Introducing scanning processes as a live and performative component, Messy Assemblages seeks to make visible the residues and traces that the process leaves behind. Messy Assemblages was rolled out as part of the beta testing for the Tate programme at Winchester School of Art.

Messy Assemblages is an opening out of Ian Dawson’s work ID2.7.1816 (2016-), which was exhibited as part of ‘Artist Boss’, at New Art Centre, Roche Court, 2016. Combining hundreds of 3D prints, the work is an ever evolving and changing collage. Dawson produces reprinted scans garnered from a variety of sources. Some of which are recognizable, including a 20th Century figurine derived from a Henry Moore sculpture and a British Museum prehistoric carving. Other forms are less familiar, such as parts from Cody Wilson’s 3D printed gun and NASA derived scans of meteors. Taken together, the sculpture questions the values of objects, their authenticity and the role authorship plays when object reproduction becomes commonplace.

Messy Assemblages stems from the long-term collaboration of Ian Dawson, Lecturer in Fine Art at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton and Paul Reilly, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton.

Ian Dawson has exhibited extensively with solo shows in New York (James Cohan Gallery), London (C&C Gallery) and Paris (Galerie Xippas) and has works in both public and private collections worldwide, including the Chaney Family collection, Goss Michael Collection, and Mickey and Janice Cartin Collection. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Artist Boss’ New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury, ‘Gestures of Resistance’ Athens and Annihilation Event, London.

http://www.iandawsonstudio.com

Paul Reilly is both a practicing field archaeologist and a pioneer of virtual and creative digital archaeologies. His current research explores ontological transformations that occur when (im)material archaeology enters the digital. He is an honorary life member and former chairman of the Computer Applications and Archaeology organisation (CAA), and also chairs the CAA International Scientific Committee.