AI Veneration Monument. 2022. Oil on birch with zinc chain, drift wood, rock. 18”x18”x96”
AI Veneration Monument is kind of a strange arcade game. Me imagining an AI imagining a landscape painting and turning it into a shrine or monument. Landscape painting made physical.
A painting dispatched for a dim future. 2022. Oil on wood and oil-paper, acrylic, plaster, pigment, birch, maple, stone rock, paper.
Taking its cue from the multidisciplinary mode of magic realism, A painting dispatched, is a fusion of time and space including images of conflict, struggle and death, simultaneously with depictions of idilic landscapes, and harmonious objects. The work is about contradictions as a way of understanding what it means to exist in the present; what it means to see war and suffering at a distance mediated through a screen, and how these events occur simultaneously close yet far. Following a magic realist approach images sourced from government archives are incorporated into a new reality that is bent out of shape, time periods merge, fractured spaces collide, and collected objects are coated in pigment exist as extensions of the painting. The central fighting figures on the box, a nod, to George Bellows 1909 painting, Stag at Sharkey’s, are a link to Bellows’ force as realist, examining the grit of daily life, and depictions of war and violence.
This project has been generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.
The production of Natural Spring Water 2020. Multimedia 6’x2’x2’
Comprised of paintings, found materials, and sculptural objects, this constellation slowly drips water into a cup on the floor. The work examines organic and mechanical systems, resembling a constructed machine that references the carbon cycle.
A 21st Century painting dilemma 2020. Oil on canvas, with carved wood, spray-paint, rocks, moss. 7’x7’x1’
The logic and decision making of my painting is practice is pushed into three dimensional space via the inclusion and alteration of new objects. The work is comprised of contradictions: paintings versus object, reference versus materiality, symmetry versus asymmetry. The work puts into question the system of painting as a contained two dimensional structure.
The mechanics of making a digital image 2019. Multimedia 18’x9’x5’
This work is a playful imaginary system that “produces” digital images. Imagine that this work is a blown up vision of the process within one cell of your digital phone or camera. One minute particle in what it takes to create a digital image. This nonsensical system has miniature figures working on assembly lines, harvesting miniature trees and plants to create the digital image of foliage in the centre of the piece.
Microscopic view into the construction of a future. 2019. Multimedia 30’x20’x10’
Microscopic view into the construction of a future is, as stated by the title, an imagined view into a process that is creating a future. This future expresses a contradiction, it is built upon opposing ideas complicating their opposition. The work is at once a utopia and a dystopia; domestic and institutional; organic and artificial. These contradictions are intended to reflect on our current state and future trajectory into the Anthropocene. Throughout the work various states of fragmentation and evolution take place engulfing: human objects, organic materials, and plastics. Central to piece is allowing the viewer to interpret and imagine narratives occurring throughout the work, with my guidance via motif, materials, flow, and use of space.
Assembly line for the production of fruit. 2018. Baltic birch, thread, fishing line, spray paint, oil paint, various plastics, 3D prints, oil paper, oranges, fan, model figurines, and porcelain.
This installation work draws on Atticus’s interest in systems, imagination, and world building. Through reoccurring symbols and objects Atticus weaves an imaginary world. Throughout this post-apocalyptic constellation broken narratives reference work, industry, and production.
Unheimlich. 2018. Oil, fabric, aluminium, modeling paste , human hair
Gucci Mane or Vae Victus. 2018. Site specific installation. Oil, acrylic, wood, steel, iron, felt, plastic, porcelain, wool, cotton, plaster, paper. Dimensions variable, 7'x5'x7'.
This work explores notions of play drawing from childhood materials and a childlike sense of creative imagination.
New, Safe, Advanced! 2017. Oil on wood with dirt, found plastics, pine needles, thread, and coca-cola. Each approximately 20’’x20’’x20’’
Coca-cola slowly drips from these strange appendages of that grow out of the wall. This work draws on 1950s advertising imagery and its sign painting form.
134 Copies of This Means War. 2017. 134 Epson prints. 17'x13'
One hundred and thirty four photographic reproductions of Atticus Gordon’s painting This Means War, displayed a grid format.