'Damage' Text

DAMAGE JOE MAGEE

An exhibition of digital images, Aytoun Gallery, Manchester, England.
25 September - 5 November 1997. Curator Johnny Magee. Catalogue published by Periphery.

Damage isn't necessarily a bad thing... if you damage something which is bad already.

Imagine a child looking into a pool and seeing their own reflection. Without thought, the child places their hand in to disturb the water. Now imagine damaging other structures with the same intent.

Joe Magee dabbles with art, he scribbles intensely in his sketch books. He is a Frankenstein, collecting images, stitching different parts together to create the ideal. His work is a response to a changing culture in which he believes greater control and manipulation are leading to its polarisation.

Joe constructs his work using the computer by combining fragments of image, form and text into compositions, treating them with filters and applying colour from the computer's palette. His practice is paralleled with the sampled and digitally generated sounds used by many contemporary musicians. The images, like the music, contain repetitive elements where components are often recycled again and again, as in 'Odd Robins', where reality is used as a blueprint to create a Robin from several others, its familiar red breast replaced by colours unique to the image. Although JoeÕs work carries the hallmark of the 'digital', this is not a reference to the computer, simply evidence of a process, like that of a painters brush or the sculptors tool.

Traditional creative practices have always benefited from the artist's accident where the fluidity and unpredictability of analogue mediums allow such events. But the Computer's environment demands artificial rather than natural arrangements of forms. This contrivance has to be thought about. The computer challenges the 'intuitive' artist, where mistakes have to be considered before they are made. Joe energises the image with scribbles and crossings out, he places in symbols, texts, and numbers to create interference. Genuine accidents however do sometimes happen - brought about by inexplicable anomalies within the computer's software or operating system, as in 'Flock X' where the 'cut and paste' marks have left, previously unintended and unfamiliar blocks of form and colour.

His art often refers to the work of Genetics, the correlation between the mathematics of the computer and that of the helix are evident. In 'Flock X' there are only two sheep. These have been replicated and geometrically arranged within the composition. They occupy a landscape of pure colour where one is eating, the other looking. And in 'Map' where the endless manipulation of our cities are akin to scientists' dabbling with chromosomes and their respective genes....taking out the 'bad'....replacing them with the 'good', and so our towns become clones, where large chains of shops sap individuality and our communications systems adorn us with analogous knowledge and aspirations.

'God Bless the Corn' (a reference to Harvest Festivals), considers the impurities in farming. The title's referral to religion suggests a purity within the harvest and regards human interference as unnatural; human meddling is suggested by the scribble text and symbols. In contrast, 'Beard Function', like a social function, suggests a polarisation; where we arrange ourselves into groups with similar identities, socially, economically or politically. The figure is confident, self aware and highly groomed and the numbers in the corner, when turned upside down, read 'Hello'.

Because the computer is not allied with any particular medium, it interfaces all of them with impartiality. Digital representation is forcing us to consider what is real and what is not, yet paradoxically this frees us to interpret with enriched imagination. 'Man in Garden' brings together the unique qualities of photography and painting. The man is defiant in a constantly changing world, the scribble energises the sky with the ferocity and intensity of fission and the black ball is the hole into which he will eventually disappear, yet the man is at peace.

Although the general thrust of digital representation threatens the 'aura' of the unique, the barriers of art and science are weakening as art gets imbued with science and science is advanced by art. And if we have entered a 'post digital' phase, Joe Magee's work can firmly claim its place. His aesthetic shows a confidence which transcends the self referential 'techno babble' of the last seven years and begins to ask more serious questions about a culture which has embraced the technology for the greater good!