EXHIBITION - Work Space Pressure

I have some of my work in an exhibition at the Art Exchange, University of Essex. This runs from 13th May until 11th June and features some of my work from the 'Qwerty' series - Retro Keyboard, Meltdown, Tactile Keyboard, and Qwerty Cuneiform Tablet are all on display along with works from another 8 artists.

If you are in the area go and check it out... An interesting and diverse selection of work :-)

http://www.artexchange.org.uk/exhibition/empathy-inc-presents-work-space-pressure

PORTFOLIO - DAY 1, Artists challenge

I have been nominated by a couple of artists on Facebook to take part in the 5 days artists challenge. This is where I share 3 images of my works every day for 5 days... I thought that I would also extend these images to my blog and twitter account. So here goes, 

Day 1, I'm sharing an image of a piece of mixed media work I created in 2007 called 'Clicking With You', this was looking at my then current fascination with internet relationships and especially online dating. I was struck by the thought that people could engage in really intense relationships with folks they had never met and that sometimes the only tactile element of that relationship was in essence with the computer keyboard, a rather stale bit of lifeless plastic. 

Karen Thompson - Clicking With You, 2007

Image two is a piece entitled 'Retro Keyboard'. This is a simple comment on the 
historical use of ceramics for recording and documenting information.

Karen Thompson - Retro Keyboard, 2008

The third image is of 'Cuneiform Tablet, ca.2007, Language Qwerty'. This is the partner piece to the Retro Keyboard. Again I'm looking at the use of ceramics as a document for recording history and information. Most of our libraries were set up with the information contained on cuneiform tablets. This piece plays with the idea that historically reads were pushed into clay tablets to create hieroglyphics of information, whereas today we push a key into the keyboard to record information. For this piece I took the keys from the keyboard and pushed the underside of the computer keys into a slab of clay to create a form of modern day hieroglyphic. I sawdust fired the final piece creating a low fired modern day Cuneiform Tablet. 

Karen Thompson - Cuneiform Tablet, ca .2007,  Language Qwerty.

All three of these works were exhibited at the Holburne Museum of Art in Bath in June 2008 as part of my degree show. The installation also included the pieces, 'Meltdown', 'Tactile Keyboard' and 'Qwerty Morse Code'. More images can be seen on my website... http://www.karent.co.uk/qwerty.html