Cathy's Art Diary

Strange exhibition at the British Library of works by contemporary artist Michael Takeo Magrunder transforming the British Libraries digital map collection into fictional landscapes for the information age. I’m afraid the most interest thing in the show were the original maps that had been used to create the four works and the information about the British Library project to digitise 19th century books and to extract the maps, Illustrations and photographs into a database.   I loved his description that an archive was not just a repository but “a storehouse of creative potential that engenders new avenues or culture”. My only problem was that I didn’t really understand the art works he had produced. This wasn’t helped by the fact the virtual reality one wasn’t working when I was there. The Paris works were large square, kaleidoscope like images but I couldn’t understand the explanation of how these related to the maps. I did like the London triptych which gradually cha...

Thought provoking exhibition at Somerset House which arose from a residency by artist Michael Takeo Magrunder in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College, London. He spent this time discussing the Book of Revelations with a range of scholars from theologian to art historians to sociologist and then looked at how to translate this academic into visual images. The result was five displays, each in their own room. One room features shots from an apocalyptic video game presented in frames and slowly moving and developing as you looked at them. Despite the devastated scenes the works were very peaceful to watch. Another had chapters of the book converted onto laser etched tables in a computer code with QR codes on them which, when scanned, did a Google image search on your phone on the first sentence of the book. My favourite was a room on the horse with an illuminated horse’s skull surrounded by small 3d prints of a skull. In the room is a 3...