Philip Craig
Artist
2024 Art in the age of ai, Group Show, The Gallery, Mayfair, London, 14th - 20th October
2024 Did I Imagine This, Solo exhibition, Banks Mill 8th – 26th July
2024 Group Show, Salon Contemporary Art, Derby Museum of Making, 14th - 16th June
2024 QUAD/FORMAT Fellowship 15th - 28th April
2024 Exhibit, Robot Day, Coventry Collage 16th March
2023 Sculptural, Group Show, Fox Yard Gallery Suffolk 22nd December - 5th January
2023 MA Graduate Show at Artcore Gallery Derby 14th - 30th September @revealed_23
2022 VIABLE, Group exhibition, Stryx Gallery - @weareviable
Awarded QUAD/FORMAT Fellowship (2023)
Awarded The Visual Reading Club Award (2023)
MA Fine Art (Distinction), University of Derby (2023)
Currently researching MPhil/PhD at the University of Derby
Instagram @philip.c.craig
I'm interested in the transformative effect of spiritual and technological objects and their impact on our culture and society, currently through the use of a post-truth philosophy and parody.
Did I Imagine This (Banks Mill 2024)
A small solo show, this was my first show of work since my MA
Memory is more flexible than we think. With the right suggestion, people can be led to believe in events that never actually happened. This phenomenon, called “imagination inflation,” occurs because imagining an event can make it seem real. From research by Elizabeth Loftus on memory and suggestion.
‘Did I Imagine This’ is a development of work made for my MA Graduate show in September 2023 whereby I examined a fictional transformational event, using text-to-image generation to develop elements of the work. These new works expand on the environment where the birthday celebration took place, using ethical
generational AI to ‘imagine’ the room and new actors from a single original photograph. Much like how current text-to-image technology is used to subvert the truth and create events that might not have happened in the way they are being visualised.
The new pieces along with the cake are made mostly from wood as a juxtaposition to the technology they emulate, I consider my sculptures to be prototypes and physical twins to their technological and digital counterparts. They can be interpreted metaphorically as intermediary objects and interfaces that bridge the physical and the ephemeral, the secular and sacred, and the earthly and heavenly. Emphasizing the transformational and transitional aspects of their use.
View the digital space at ARoomForMyCake
QUAD Fellowship and residency (MA Graduate show AWARD 2023)
A Room For My Physical Self
In response to the studio space and the wider environment of QUAD fellowship, I made a series of works both physical and digital to make sense of my surroundings.
View the digital space at ARoomForMyDigitalSelf
Manna, Mother, Other (MA Graduate show 2023)
‘We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning’, Bret Harte 1836 - 1902
Bret Harte's clever twist on Marcus Manilius' timeless truth certainly captures the attention. Yet, my fascination extends beyond the simple acceptance of this statement as truth. It lies in the profound duality concealed within, in the subtle gradations that emerge amidst the stark juxtaposition of life and death. The art objects in this exhibition employ these themes of duality to contemplate communion with the "other" through the lenses of social and object parody. Within this exploration, I present three protagonists for transformation: "manna," a mythical symbol of divine or spiritual sustenance; "mother," our initial encounter and early nurturer of social bonds; and the philosophical concept of the sentient "other." Through this lens, the work delves into the complexities of human existence, offering a thought-provoking examination of the interplay between beginnings and endings, connections and disparities, and the intricate web of existence itself. "Activated" through the viewer's imagining of a transformative event, the work becomes a dual of the original transforming object and the art object, both coexisting physically and psychically. The work questions the rationale of an "other" providing a transformative experience beyond what we consciously know, engaging the subconscious of the psychic early life event, and posing that the search continues beyond that moment as object-seeking later in life. (Part of my process for creating this work was made using OpenAI software and as such I would like to acknowledge that inclusion. The process of inclusion was to elucidate how algorithms have come to be ever present in our lives to the point of dependency .)
Artificially Imagined Birthday Cake - (2023 MA Graduate Show)
The concept of a transformative object in space and time, ‘Artificially Imagined Birthday Cake’ features a cake placed upon the ‘sanctified’ kitchen table. Its presence invokes a memory of celebration and the journey from one age to the next. A right of passage. This instance of the symbolic cake, upon its altar, represents the quintessential birthday cake, serving as a prelude to the introduction of an 'other' capable of granting wishes, and the absurdness of its materiality questions whether it matters if the cake is real or not.
AI was just about to go mainstream and I realised that it was quickly going to enable a ‘link’ to that digital space that included our memories as images. I wanted to create a piece that collapses the time between an actual event in the past and the present. The photograph is real, the cake image was DALL-E 2 generated. and I made the cake by hand. I fed the final cake back into some software and created a new photograph of an imagined birthday. As a way of asking, is there a difference between me remembering my birthdays and reimagining them?
(Part of my process for creating this work was made using OpenAI software and as such I would like to acknowledge that inclusion. The process of inclusion was to elucidate how algorithms have come to be ever present in our lives to the point of dependency.)
'A Room For My Digital Self' - (2023 Exhibited in 'Sculptural')
"A Room for My Digital Self" is a tangible representation of the spaces we curate for our digital personas. This piece reflects on the paradox of the digital self, both a construction within the binary codes of the virtual world and a reflection of our complex human identity.
I made this as a response to needing a space to rest the mental projection of myself as a social media persona. Having finished my MA I felt a pressure to continue making and explaining work on my media platform as a response to the social gap after graduating. The whimsical nature of the figure, generated by DALL-e 2 gives an emotional connection to the space inside.
(Part of my process for creating this work was made using OpenAI software and as such I would like to acknowledge that inclusion. The process of inclusion was to elucidate how algorithms have come to be ever present in our lives to the point of dependency.)
Credence A Table in between worlds - (2023)
A Credence table resides in a space in between worlds on the east side of a sacred place, The viewer can look through the looking glass into a world not always seen.
Wood, Metal and Glass
L 100cm H 100cm W 25cm
'Come see me when you are lonely' A blessing machine - (2022)
This machine will bless any object placed within it, providing payment has been made and the entity returns to it.
Wood, Metal and Ash
H 240cm Dia 70cm
'You will need me some-time' A Cursing Box - (2022)
A large box containing an entity that will curse any object once the ritual has been performed.
Wood, Metal and Ash
W 70cm H 70cm L 70cm
'Penance' (2022 Exhibited in VIABLE at Stryx Gallery)
An exploration of the act of repeated penance, scratch and cut marks made with a found tool and erased with ash and pigment, then repeated. The work was completed over a period of days.
Wood and ash with mars black acrylic paint
W 10cm H 100cm
(Private collection)
'Left behind, I search for you' A re-memory box - (2022)
A portable device to recall forgotten or vague memories through the act of drawing and sacrificial burning.
Wooden Box, Painters Wedge, Pencils, Paper, Phone Holder, Pot, Scissors, Lighter, Santo Wood.
W 25cm D 12cm H 46cm
You have successfully transferred your DIGITAL SELF!
Once the phone is closed your digital self will reside in this avatar.
Unlock your phone screen to resume normal service.
