BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT

COLLAPSE, 2024
Ink and acrylic on canvas
60 x 60 x 2 cm

COLLAPSE (2024) was part of Logging Off, a duo exhibition by Bob Bicknell-Knight and Rosa-Maria Nuutinen at The Cut, Halesworth, Suffolk, UK, 27th February – 6th April 2024.

The exhibition explored the seductive nature of video games worlds, digital addiction, climate collapse, apocalypse anxieties and 24/7 hypercapitalism. The exhibition reflects upon how the video games we play are created, how our lives are becoming increasingly disconnected because of new technologies and a general feeling of malaise towards the contemporary moment.

A series of paintings throughout the gallery explored how video games are created and the climate crisis. The works are hybrid paintings, beginning as digitally fabricated images within the video game development software Unity. The images are then printed onto canvas, stretched and painted onto with acrylic paint, with the offline artist’s hand interacting with the original digital image. The painting method explores the tension between the digital and physical sides of Bicknell-Knight’s practice and is a collaboration between his digital and physical working methods.

COLLAPSE was one of several paintings in the series, depicting animals at the precise moment that they’re falling to the floor, never to rise again, accompanied by words associated with destruction and decay. Everything you see in the paintings, from the animals to the trees, has been purchased as a prefabricated (prefab) asset. Within video games, an asset is any resource that is used in the development of a video game, from 3D models to sound effects and pieces of code. The assets in the paintings are simple 3D models with low polygon counts, like animals and plant life, usually appearing in multiple places across different video games. The use of these models, purchased by game developers rather than being made themselves, is a contemporary coping mechanism harnessed to accelerate the production process of virtual experiences. The paintings use the idea of the prefab as a vehicle for speaking about how the world is in an unstoppable free fall towards a global climate crisis.

COLLAPSE has been included in the following exhibitions:

– Logging Off w/ Rosa-Maria Nuutinen. At The Cut Arts Centre, Halesworth, UK, 27th February – 6th April 2024.