Online Experiences

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The 24th exhibition on isthisit? was called ‘Online Experiences’, which considered the various notions of what it means to be exploring the internet in the current climate. Pippa Eason’s video 'Its Only Romantic on The Internet’ visualises a technology enthused post-apocalyptic wasteland, which is confined within the white walls of a gallery space. Here, Eason seems to be harnessing the idea of the ‘White Cube’ as a visual metaphor for the various screen based devices in our own lives, and the apocalyptic visual feast mimicking the seemingly chaotic scenarios that occur within our own phones and computers. Next to this is Var Sahakyan’s disturbing film 'Circle with a diameter 8', that sees the artist staring down the barrel of the camera, through the computer screen and into your personal lives, silently judging your every move as we see the emotions on the artists' face slowly change. Is Sahakyan embodying the stereotypical white male NSA employee watching us through our webcams, or is he simply showing us the various sides of these government run organisations, which can be both brutal and forgiving? Ruiz Stephinson's film 'I'M LONELY BUT NO ONE CAN TELL' was also featured, exploring how people in first world societies are slowly assimilating to living vicariously through other individuals' lived experiences online, through social media applications like Instagram and Facebook. All these works are grouped together into a huddle, mimicking how one effectively ‘buys’ into all these experiences when ‘surfing the web’ in 2016.

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​​Curated by Bob Bicknell-Knight