Jesse Houlding

Statement

My work uses natural phenomenon such as magnetism and gravity to explore perception and the construction of meaning. By creating a relationship between the visible and the invisible, I explore the boundary between the known and the unknown.

I am interested in the way we use visual systems such as scientific drawings to understand and explain invisible forces. My work draws on this need to explain, on the ways we negotiate the mixture of anxiety and wonder we feel as we attempt to make sense of the world around us.

Jesse Houlding Resume.pdf

Stephen Whisler

Statement

A Warning Sign of Things to Come: 

Surveillance, eavesdropping, metadata mining, and drones are all very much in the news these days. The recent revelations by Edward Snowdon show just how far and deep all of this activity has actually penetrated our society. The NSA seems to have unlimited power to snoop on Americans and the world and the CIA has the formidable power to not just surveil, but to attack targets of their surveillance with drones. These new forms of surveillance and warfare are a threat to the world, and are increasingly being used by every country that can afford them. Drones will soon be in wide use in the United States and we need to be very careful about how we allow our government to use this technology.

The US has, and soon many other countries will also have the ability to project awesome force with these Predators and Reapers. The pilots, sitting in front of computers in Florida or Nevada, can watch someone walking in a village in Afghanistan and with the flick of a joystick fire a Hellfire missile and kill him. Is this really what we want our government doing on our behalf? We must ask: who is watching from these floating robots in the sky? Who is watching the watchers?

For several years I have been investigating surveillance and the imposition of power in my art. I was really interested in finding a way to speak about surveillance and the surveillance state that seems to be creeping upon us. I started with a series of drawings of guard towers, border towers and watchtowers. The image of the tower is fraught with psychological implications for most people. The phallic nature of the form is rather obvious and they can have a very sinister feeling and evoke a sense of foreboding. They are to me a symbol of the patriarchy, and a symbol of the means that the state and the patriarchy will go to project power. That being said there is also a beauty to the form that I find compelling.

I turned to images of drones after realizing that they are the new watchtowers of the state. They are also oddly sinister and, like the towers with their unseen observers, you cannot see who is piloting them. The windowless, bulbous noses of the Predator drones and the Reaper drones also have a shape that is, like the towers, phallic, and to my mind, rather scary. My drawings of the towers and drones, with their pastel or charcoal finger and handprints, have a humanizing effect on these sinister objects. They have the feeling of lost artifacts or blueprints for an uncertain future.

Stephen Whisler resume.pdf