Oriel Mon is delighted to be showing the work of Artists Jess Bugler, Ruth Cousins and Sarah Holyfield, all graduates from Bangor University, and digital 3D sculptor Matthew Day in a cutting-edge collaboration, as they look over the precipice at the new age of technology facing us all.
This exhibition will be the second time these artists have shown together. Sarah Holyfield stated “Oriel Mon is providing us with a wonderful opportunity to showcase both our work and our concerns to a wider audience, and we are very grateful for the support being provided by the Arts Council Wales”.
Our lives, from finance, to welfare, to health are moving online; social media is becoming the core mode of communication; automation is heralding a transformation in patterns of work, and AI is taking centre stage to control our future world. This exhibition questions the nature of this online world, probing our sense of self in this digital landscape, examining the impact of calculation and control in our lives, and challenging us to contemplate the displacement of our physical bodies themselves. The artists use a range of new technologies from laser cutters, to sublimation printers, Risographs and 3D printers to embrace this digital context.
Jess Bugler has exhibited nationally and won awards for her printmaking, recently she was the recipient of the Peter Reddick Award with an exhibition at Spike Island and the winner of a National Original Prints Awards in 2018. She has also featured in Printmaking Today. Her work interweaves traditional relief printing processes with modern technology. Guardian Art critic Jonathan Jones described her work as “atmospheric, poetic and sensitive.”
Ruth Cousins was the winner of a residency at Stwidio Maelor 2018. She explores her Welsh identity and sense of place in the landscape, writing “I’m fascinated by the opposing forces of our technological world, the access to the global and the defence of the local.”
Sarah Holyfield, won the Contemporary Art Society Wales Student Award 2017 and explains “I make 2d and 3d work using a variety of technologies to look at the way technology is now playing a major role in all aspects of our lives”.
Matthew Day, graduated with a distinction, in his Contemporary Craft MA from Hereford College of Arts and his work has been featured in INNOVATION design magazine. He explores the possibilities of digital technologies to create innovative and challenging sculptures. Using a 3D printer, Matthew has developed a series of striking sculptures to be worn replacing prosthetic arms. Here technology is displacing the physical body, offering an alternative to notions of disability and perhaps challenging the primacy of human evolution as the way of the future.
Nicola Gibson, Visitor Experience Manager stated “This exhibition will bring a diverse mix of challenging ideas and art practice into Oriel Mon. We hope that this thought-provoking collection of work will encourage some stimulating conversations about how technology is evolving and impacting our everyday lives”
The exhibition runs from the 28th September to the 30th November 2019. The Oriel is open daily from 10am until 5pm and admission is free. For further information please contact:-
01248 724444 / oriel@ynysmon.llyw.cymru / www.orielynysmon.info
“There is a new radical interconnectedness of things and ourselves – we are utterly emeshed”
BRIDLE
“We are connected to vast repositories of knowledge and yet we have not learned to think”
ZUBOFF
For further information: Nicola Gibson, Visitor Experience Manager
01248 752014 / NicolaGibson@ynysmon.llyw.cymru