BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT

John (Stower), 2021
Aluminium modular system, 3D printed PLA, SD card, miscellaneous screws
135 x 40 x 40 cm

John (Stower) (2021) is part of a body of work by Bob Bicknell-Knight exploring Amazon warehouses and Amazon’s relationship to its human employees, including paintings, sculptures and video.

Within the project Bicknell-Knight has produced a number of paintings depicting Amazon workers and their warehouse jobs. Amazon employees, loosely dubbed Amazonians, spend countless hours within Amazon warehouses undergoing a variety of different jobs that will soon be automated, replaced by artificially intelligent machines. Human workers are already being treated as if they are machines within these warehouse environments, with timed bathroom breaks and constant surveillance. Their job titles, ranging from Picker to Water Spider, detail what menial, physically demanding and incredibly repetitive activity they’ll be undergoing on a daily basis, from picking up and scanning products to wrapping pallets. These employees are aware of their precarious position but, as Amazon continues to dominate global markets, it’s increasingly difficult to find work within this industry and to not be treated like an emotionless machine. Bicknell-Knight’s paintings detail the insides of Amazon warehouses, working from photos released to global news outlets alongside tours of Amazon facilities, as a vehicle for speaking about automation, forms of hyper-capitalism and unstable warehouse environments.

John (Stower) is one of a series of sculptures created within the body of work, made up of an aluminium modular extrusion system commonly used in autonomous forms of production and to build office partitions. Sitting atop these rigid structures are 3D printed body parts with SD cards embedded within. Each artwork in the sculptural series represents a Amazon worker and the body part that they use on a regular basis in their job whilst working for Amazon, body parts that will soon be replaced by intelligent automated machines. Within each 3D print an SD card is embedded that contains an interview with the affected employee, speaking about their experience working for the multinational technology company. The embedded technology references the ongoing practice of unpaid and underpaid labourers hiding ‘cry for help’ notes in different products, attempting to alert authorities to unsafe working conditions and forms of modern day slavery.

John (Stower) has been included in the following exhibitions:

– Art Düsseldorf, presented by Office Impart. At Düsseldorf, DE, 11th – 14th April 2024.
– Soft Agitators, curated by Gilles Neiens. At Saarländische Galerie, Europäisches Kulturforum, Berlin, DE, 11th November – 18th December 2021.
– It’s Always Day One. At Office Impart, Berlin, DE, 22nd April – 6th June 2021.