BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT

Relic III, 2019
Road bike, 3D printed PLA plastic, artificial grass, adhesive spray
Dimensions variable

Part of a series of works concerning the automation of work and dystopic portrayals of the future, originally produced during an online residency with Digital Artist Residency (DAR) in 2019. During Bob Bicknell-Knight’s time on the DAR residency he produced a new series of paintings and sculptures, exploring apocalyptic video games, where, due to a lack of human intervention, nature has been able to reclaim urban space within the digital world.

The works depict abandoned, long forgotten cars that have become monuments to virtual users who would have previously inhabited them within the digital space. The works in the series began with Bicknell-Knight wandering through virtual worlds, using in game photography techniques to document the degradation of technology and modern life in a number of different in game environments. The cars, buildings and roads in the series depicted in the paintings are relics from a future world, not dissimilar to our own, with these elements frozen in time and space due to unknown interventions.

The works in the series are early hybrid paintings, part of an ongoing project that examines the infrastructures of data and online consumerism. Within this still ongoing series Bicknell-Knight produces fake or faux paintings, utilising Photoshop’s Oil Paint filter to render painterly stills of an unknown number of images, found online or created himself.

The works are produced as digital images, circulated online through social media sites. During these early works they were first documented as if they were a work in progress, mounted on a wall in an artist studio, part of the Studio View (2019 – 2022) series, complete with a digitally imposed palette and empty cups of coffee. Staging the paintings using found online imagery, the paintings appear in studios and living rooms as actualized art objects. Sitting between the fakeness of a three-dimensional render and the image as function, the paintings appear to be authentic, highlighting the misconceptions of viewership through social media and other digital platforms.

Once posted online, the works were produced as physical, real world objects. The digital images are printed onto canvas, stretched and then partly painted onto with acrylic and oil paint, with the offline artist’s hand interacting with the original online digital image.

The sculpture Relic III (2019) functions as a companion to these wall-based works, a bike that has been covered in artificial grass, becoming physical relics of the future in the present.

Relic III has been included in the following exhibitions:

– Humachine Flux, curated by Digital Artist Residency and OVADA. At OVADA, Oxford, UK, 20th September – 20th October 2019.