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Featuring Anna Dumitriu (in collaboration with Melissa Grant and Rachel Sammons), Carla Gannis, AOS (Art is Open Source), Simon McLennan, and Alan Sondheim.

Humans have always exploited the raw materials this planet has to offer – with the power to change the nature of things, whether physical or virtual. With constant re-edits and enhancements we transform everything we touch as part of our evolutionary mutation. In Greek mythology Prometheus was a demigod and a Titan worshipped by craftsmen. Greek Titans were ultimately honoured as the ancestors of humans, who in turn were attributed with “the invention of the arts and magic” (Graves 1964). The artists featured in Children of Prometheus at Furtherfield Gallery explore the possible consequences of our scientific and technological imaginings for us as individuals, our society and the world at large.

In this exhibition, visitors can encounter Anna Dumitriu’s Microbe Mouth, a necklace of unique teeth grown from bacteria. Microbe Mouth is a collaboration with scientists Melissa Grant and Rachel Sammons from the University of Birmingham’s School of Dentistry. Carla Gannis updates Hieronymus Bosch’s famous triptych in her Garden of Emoji Delights replacing medieval religious symbolism with an emotion-inspired iconography of the 21st century. Alan Sondheim’s Avataurror are 3D printed avatars representing distorted, wounded, problematic bodies and their relationship to states of violence and genocide, where cracks and wounds are eternally everywhere and nowhere. Simon McLennan’sDrawings reflect intimate contradictions in our dysfunctional society showing us daily mutations. When the artist and open-source engineer Salvatore Iaconesi, one of the artist duo AOS (Art is Open Source), was diagnosed with cancer he launched a participatory open source initiative to find a cure. The resulting global art performance La Cura explores the complexity of being human and seeks to find ways to reclaim our bodies in collaboration with others. The exhibition considers the roles of our arts and science traditions, and how they are played out while examining: governance, posthumanism, biohacking, and biopolitics.

This exhibition is produced in partnership with LABoral, in Gijon, as an extension of the Monsters of the Machine exhibition 18 Nov 2016 – 21 May 2017. Based on Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankensteinwritten 200 years ago which continues to offer a lens through which to examine current practices in arts and technology and how they shape society today.

Artists Artwork in the Exhibition

Anna Dumitriu – Microbe Mouth
Carla Gannis – Garden of Emoji Delights
Simon McLennan – Drawings
Alan Sondheim – 3D Printed glitch avatars & Landscape tablets, 2 Glitch videos
AOS (Art is Open Source) Salvatore Iaconesi & Oriana Persico – La Cura

Events, Activities, and Presentations

Alan Sondheim – Presentation
Wednesday 5 July 2017, 6.30 – 8.30pm
Furtherfield Commons, Finsbury Park
FREE

Artist Talks: Carla Gannis and Alan Sondheim 
Monday 10 July 2017, 6:30 – 8.30pm
CAS, Davidson House, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA
FREE – booking essential, strictly no late admittance (register)

Notes:

 
[1] Robert Graves. Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. Paul Hamlyn, London. 5th Edition, 1964. P.92.

[2] Body Drift: Butler, Hayles, Haraway (Posthumanities). Author Arthur Kroker. University of Minnesota Press (22 Oct. 2012).

[3] Body Drift: Butler, Hayles and Haraway. Review by Marc Garrett 15/08/2015.

The exhibition draws upon ideas originally written in an essay Prometheus 2.0: Frankenstein Conquers the World! Marc Garrett.