tick tock

Apocalypse; commonly taken to mean the end of the World and is generally considered in a religious context; the use of the term on this post derives from the Ancient Greek meaning:

apokálypsis, (meaning "uncovering"), translated literally from Greek, is a disclosure of knowledge, i.e., a lifting of the veil or revelation.

​Images of storms are often associated with the popular idea of The Apocalypse.
Storms on Earth are growing stronger as global warming progresses and flooding becomes more frequent. It could be that we are already experiencing the beginning of an apocalyptic historical period.

'Storm'

​We are clearly living in a time of simultaneously great threat and great promise. Accelerated and multi-directional change driven by explosive technological evolution. This "'Great Acceleration' was smashed into overdrive by the nuclear warfare unleashed on Japan in August 1945.

'Bear'

'Bear' is a NATO code name for the class of Russian bomber that dropped the most powerful bomb ever detonated in history.

The Internet is a consequence of the nuclear age; the web was originally designed as a distributed network that could survive a nuclear war because it was organically spread across large regions of territory enabling parts of it to survive and function despite extensive damage. There are many technologies that have emerged since the industrial age and progressed into the digital age including the rapidly developing bio-tech revolution driven by the decoding of the genome. These technologies are beginning to combine living tissue and machines in increasingly intimate connectivity.

'Mobility'

The drawings in this post are about these biotech events that we are witnessing and participating in. These events include unintended consequences as well as deliberately constructed objectives.
In 'Mobility' a human figure part flesh part machine is caught in a web of monstrous plumbing, nerves and wires bind her to a brain lobe in a tank connected to bigger streams and channels.

'Moon Walk'

We are now in a world that was conceived in some the most imaginative science fiction of the last century. Those of us who remember the Moon Landings will also recall the sense of terror produced by the Cold War when nuclear Armageddon seemed to be imminent. In fact it was this arms race that acted as a spur to the space race. As in most conflict much of this deferred warfare was about ideological and physical territory. Eastern Europe was the fulcrum of the disputed territories though the devastating effects of nuclear war threatened much greater areas. The stakes that were raised in this race for supremacy that risked destroying the physical territory were matched by the fiendish ingenuity that lay behind the technology of thermo-nuclear warfare.

'Deterrent'

'Territory'

It was this sense of crisis that motivated the endeavour that put people on the Moon and all the technological innovation that was needed to do that. Satellites, computing, medical and terrain scanning are some examples of an explosion that produced the global connectivity that now seems normal and everyday.

'Creation Myth'

This binary condition of connection arising from conflict has always stimulated the way I have produced images. Genres from baroque chiaroscuro to modernist film noir inform my image making sometimes in form but more often in content and reflect my personal perception of the World.

The chemistry arises from the way light emerges from darkness or to put it another way by illuminating darkness. Although my subjects are often dark I try to infuse them with humour. It's not so much that I relish catastrophe as I am excited by the opportunities for change that it brings. 

'Crash'

In 'Crash' a sports car lies crumpled in a forest and is beginning to be engulfed by vegetation. Its inertia futile in the face of slow but inevitable growth.

'Fall and Rise'

In 'Fall and Rise' a ship drops behind into a trough between waves seemingly in peril but a movement in the sea draws a way forward toward the rising Sun. The big bang creation myth of the suggests that the imperfections, wrinkles and irregularities of the expanding surface gave rise to the contrasts that enabled structures like galaxies to form; is it possible that these 'imperfections' cascade up in the complexity hierarchy of material structures from subatomic events through chemical and biological processes to drive the complex cultural contradictions that we experience as crises?