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| 'Apparent Horizon' 2012 |
The current exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery is David Cotterrell's 'Monsters of the Id', (co-curated by Helen Sloan and SCAN) is a body of work which spreads across video, audio, interactive media, artificial intelligence and hybrid technology. Upon meeting the artist himself he stated "I work as a war artist, but not in the way that you see in the media, I try not to dramatise the war torn nature of Afghanistan, but try and focus on its landscapes." The works are derived from a 2 year span of his trips to Afghanistan where he took over 2000 images during each trip, yet not one of them were anywhere to be seen with in the exhibition. Cotterrell also told me "The hardest part of putting this exhibition together was hiding all the technology, while trying to make it run smoothly, which has been a bit of a challenge."
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| 'Searchlight 2' 2012 |
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| Birdseye view of 'Searchlight 2' 2012 |
What's fascinating is that each person who visits this exhibition play some part among the work, as when stood in front of 'The Observer Effect' various people walk up to the screen almost interacting with the viewer, this correlates with 'Searchlight 2' as what appear as little black 'ant like' dots scurrying across the chalk terrain are in fact people, and is just a different perspective of 'The Observer Effect'.
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| 'The Observer Effect' |
The final room is untitled, displays what appears to be a military base set up.
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| 'Untitled' 2012 |
In this small installation consists of an army tent desk and military communications equipment, which perhaps constructs the underlying view in which Cotterrell perceives the current war in Afghanistan. The question is does this set up represent that of an obsessive teen playing war games (due to what appears to be a gaming control to the right of the laptop) or an actual military set up, put in place to control drones?
The ultimate question is, are we in control?
www.cotterrell.com
www.hansardgallery.org.uk
www.scansite.org
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