Updates on our artist in residence Charles Harrop-Griffiths

Our upcoming exhibition ‘Controlled Realities‘ will be your first chance to see work developed by our Artist in Residence, alongside sculptural pieces by Rachel Ara and Jacek Ludwig Scarso. As part of his residency, Charles Harrop-Griffiths has been researching his very timely chosen topics to merge fine art with themes and issues pertaining to new technologies. The dissemination of news on social media, and its lack of moderation, leads to conspiracy theories, paranoia and opinion pieces.

Now that ‘miscommunication’ is part of our daily vocabulary, particularly in the guise of fake news and alternative facts, Charles has been sticking with a visual motif from previous works: wires.

Depicting something physically invisible yet an integral part of our personal and professional lives is translated from virtual space to a new medium for Charles: steel. Such a bold choice of ‘canvas’

reinforces the ways in which these messages are not permanent, nor even physical. If such connections were visible, this frantic exchange of information would be both terrifying and sobering.

Charles’ new work looks to materialise the overwhelming entanglement of digital information, and the blurred lines between fact and fiction. We are living in a time where contemporary art must address these ideas as they are so important to a twenty-first century audience.