THOMAS AITCHISON'S 'DRAG A FILE HERE' AT COLLECTIVE
How would Andy Warhol have harnessed today’s modern technologies to create his unique brand of art?
Photoshop, 3D printers, social networking etc. would have given him endless opportunities for his work. Would that have been a good thing? Would he have simply dragged a file and let the computer do the rest of the work?
On a first glance at Thomas Aitchison’s exhibition, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there wasn’t much to it. What looks like a selection of prints of mundane objects and holiday destinations seems quite unoriginal. But just like Andy Warhol and the artists of the Pop Art movement, the thought process and work that went into creating it is actually more important than the finished product.
Drag a File Here consists of a series of paintings that start out as images processed using photo-editing software. Aitchison then paints the images meticulously by hand. These works may look like screen prints, but the end result took time, effort and real skill to reproduce.
Aitchison’s colour palate is borrowed straight from the Pop Art movement. The bright and vibrant strips of colour that make up the works intentionally confuse the image. Stare at them for too long and your eyes feel like they’ve been looking at the sun on a bright day.
The works are painted onto decorators’ old dust sheets, but the images don’t fill the whole, handmade, makeshift frames. They curiously appear there like stencils by a graffiti artist. The reflective panelling on the walls is supposed to give the whole room a backstage feel, as if we’ve wandered into a space not quite ready to be seen by an audience.
One of the works is positioned on the floor, and is even held up by decorator’s pyramids. Again this is another trick played by Aitchison – despite the unfinished and backstage feel, this has all been precisely thought through and everything is just as it is meant to be seen.
Aitchison could have chosen grander more complicated images, yet the mundaneness plays along with the whole ‘artless’ conceit.
As the title of the show suggests, yes, he did at one point drag a file on his computer, but that was the easy bit.—Rhys Fullerton
Drag a File Here was developed as part of Satellites Programme 2015. It continues at Collective (City Observatory, Calton Hill) until 14 June. Admission Free.
