'Slow Life' at the John Hansard Gallery

Monday, 25 September 2006 00:10

Southampton, UK - Slow Life is a new exhibition of work curated by Yuu Takehisa, and organized by the John Hansard Gallery. This exhibition unites seven international artists whose work explores the parameters of today’s hi-tech lifestyle. A combination of multidisciplinary works, several of which are newly commissioned for this exhibition, illustrate the influences that technology has had on traditional values and the speed of contemporary life.  On exhibit until 28 October.

Responding to our excessive dependence on mass-produced goods, Wilfrid Almendra (an artist based in France) exhibits two meticulously handcrafted hardware tools as an antithesis to a dominant market-driven society.

South African-born, London-based Dale Berning, has created an interactive sound piece that reflects upon exhaustive modern consumerism.  Played on dubplates (a brittle alternative to vinyl that degrades through use), the work eventually deteriorates.  With the analogue medium, Berning explores transience and decline intrinsic to life.

Illustrative of cyberspace ‘reality’, Canadian artist Mark Karasick uses encaustic, an ancient wax-painting technique, to manipulate digital images (taken from an Internet forum where members showcase their portraits during the point of orgasm).  He points out different moral codes and behaviors adopted respectively in ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ life.

Tokyo-based Ryota Kuwakubo explores the effects of communication by hi-tech electrical equipment on human beings.  By developing a device that extracts only consonant sounds from radio broadcast, Kuwakubo creates a chilling hypothesis of us unable to convey information due to loss of human intelligence: language.