ON TOUCH AND SCREENS

These artworks stem from an artistic research project asking what can painting and drawing practice reveal about contemporary practices and perceptions of touchscreen technology, focussing on touch and gesture. Here, attention isn’t so much directed towards the images, videos and text that fill the screens of electronic devices but rather the window-like glass that is often looked through. For this work, fingerprints, reflections, cracked and chipped glass have been variously recorded, traced and re-interpreted using artistic media and methods.

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Mae’r gweithiau celf yma yn deillio o brosiect ymchwil artistig yn gofyn beth all peintio a lluniadu ddatgelu am arferion cyfoes o gylch technoleg sgrin gyffwrdd, gyda phwyslais ar ystumiau a chyffyrddiad. Yma, nid yw'r sylw'n cael ei gyfeirio cymaint at y delweddau, y fideos a'r geiriau sy'n llenwi sgriniau ein dyfeision electronig, ond yn hytrach y petryal gwydr sy’n cael ei sbïo ‘drwyddo’. Ar gyfer y gwaith hwn, mae olion bysedd, adlewyrchiadau a gwydr wedi hollti a tholcio wedi'u cofnodi, dargopïo a'u hail-ddehongli mewn ffyrdd amrywiol gan ddefnyddio cyfryngau a dulliau artistig.

Touch (2021)
Forty-four painted objects (oil and acrylic on gesso) and a list (oil on touchscreen protector glass).
Each painting: 14 x 7 x 1 cm
Glass: 14 x 6.5 cm
Overall dimensions: variable

Touch consists of forty-four objects painted in a hyperrealist manner and a list. Together they represent one day of observed smartphone use, beginning with selecting ‘snooze’ in response to the morning alarm clock.

Over the last decade or so, the movements of fingers interfacing small glass screens has become a daily activity for many. With attention fixed on the task at hand, these gestures are performed with unthinking fluency; a silent haptic choreography corresponding to this technological moment.

Latency is the state of existing but not yet manifest; hidden or concealed. A ‘latent print’ is produced by dusting aluminium powder very lightly over a surface revealing fingerprint marks. Touch was made by simulating these marks in oil paint in a similarly deliberate, slow, contemplative act, bringing in to dialogue the contrasting marks left by the gestures of touchscreen use and those of painting. 

Each painted object, the scale of a smartphone, was made using the traditional technique of gesso-making similar to that described by Cennini in ‘The Craftsman’s Handbook’ (c. l400). The process involves the application of several layers of a heated chalk, pigment and glue mixture which is later sanded to create a smooth surface for painting. Juxtaposing old and new media, Touch draws attention to hands, gesture, tactility and technology.