Workplace Foundation | 12 Blandford Square, Newcastle, NE1 4HZ
Opening reception: Friday 22 September, 5 - 8pm
Opening hours: Tues - Weds, 12 - 6pm and by appointment
Workplace Foundation is delighted to announce a new exhibition in Newcastle by Hazel Brill, which runs from 23 September - 4 November 2023.
Featuring a series of sculptures and video, Brill has created an installation that references a gothic laboratory, conjuring a shiny utopian future which has turned messy and grotesque. Inspired by intricate set designs and depictions of laboratories from horror films, the artist is interested in gothic horror fiction as a device to deal with fears around transformative technologies, where the lines between the living and the non-living are blurred, posing an existential threat.
The works in the exhibition are rooted in developments with contemporary technology, and provoke and subvert popular narratives around science, teasing out complicated feelings of fear and anticipation of the unknown. Here, a set of recurring images and patterns weave an opaque story around themes of fate, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence, while the sculptures function as fictional 'breeding beds' for a series of intertwined, imaginary creatures. Dreamlike premonitions about the fate of the protagonists are embedded into the ‘walls’, suggesting an ominous forecast for the inhabitants’ futures. These images and patterns are stamped into the clay, embedded in the structures of the installation and rusted onto metal images hung on the wall, with references crossing between the sculptures and video.
Many of the sculptural installations contain their own internal processes, including live bacteria, and are fashioned from cardboard, scrap metal, steel, glass, clay, faux fur. A dissonant soundtrack accompanies the pieces, featuring field recordings from biotechnology labs, the use of image to sound generator, synth music and collaged tracks. Sound includes samples of Scarlett Woolfe live recordings, snippets of guitar tracks by Roland Fischer-Vousden and image to sound generation using Olivia Jack's software programme Pixelsynth.
Beginning with research into uses of artificial intelligence within wet-laboratories, the artist followed a wide-ranging associative trail, using computer ‘vision’ and ‘hearing’ to interpret their studio practice. Working alongside an AI chatbot companion and Google's computer vision function, this experiment led to the dizzying set of references, stretching from 17th century machines for spiritual experiences, early forms of coding and to contemporary practices within pharmaceutical industries. Scattered across the space, Brill’s gothic-horror-inspired set design absorbs, reconfigures and riffs upon a set of playfully absurd reference points, and through an experimental use of wide ranging media, contemplates the role of theatricality, storytelling and emotion in scientific research.
