Luke McCreadie. A length of spit dangled from a mouth

About

Videos appear, apparitions of sculptures lost, perhaps never made, animations made in software designed to dream of real objects. A turgid digital space written for flat screens gives way to tyrannical light which glorifies the perfection of thin objects, only face and no body. When objects escape this digitally animated world, they break the shackles of binary language and are sunburned in natural light, a length of chain struggling in plastic, a clay object drooping without its software framework. The language drips out of the real, as its maker, it’s unfortunate singularity. To escape, back into the grip of many forms of language. Nose blocked, chronic sinusitis, reminded constantly of a tacit state in the face of all that seeks to destroy bodies and make them into linguistic sculpture. The linguistic form suffers language. The linguistic sculpture takes its cue from language.

McCreadie probes longstanding sculptural concerns through the lens of present-day imaging technology and fabrication techniques. Digital animation, CNC laser etching and 3-D printing sit alongside more traditional practices grounded in casting, welding, hand-worked wood and metal. Glossy, awkward, dumb, the works seek to operate at the intersection of several languages: spoken, written, sculpted and programmed.

The sculptures suggest and enact acts of physical failure that allude to linguistic failure, lumpen blobs or skeletal frames that block our movements or lines of sight fold under pressure. 

A length of spit dangled from a mouth. suggests an interplay of utterances and mutenesses.

The exhibition will be accompanied by Q1, featuring an interview with Luke McCreadie by Matt's Gallery Deputy Director Tim Dixon. Q is a new series of interviews, conducted to coincide with the programme at Matt's Gallery.