Exhibition
Sam Winston: New Works
1 Dec 2010 – 22 Dec 2010
Event times
Wednesday to Sunday 11am -7pm
Cost of entry
free
Address
- Saison Poetry Library
- Level 5, Royal Festival Hall
- London
- E2 7DJ
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Waterloo & Embankment
- Waterloo, Waterloo East & Charing Cross
About
By the time you've read this sentence three people have been born into the world.By the time you've read this sentence two will have passed away.
By the time you've lived through this twelve-hour day there will be 100,000 more children on the planet. And in the same twelve hours 70,000 people will have died.
Birthday is a new work by artist Sam Winston. In it he records every individual birth and death over a twelve-hour period. Initially he imagined working in real time, marking the beat of each life with a small circle. But he immediately realised it was impossible to keep up with events and it would take many months to graphically capture the rhythm of life and death. The result is a set of images, of haunting intensity, that capture the ebb and flow of the planet's population.
Alongside these drawings he will be presenting his new artist book, Orphan, and further studies around text and image. The artist will also be in residence throughout the duration of the exhibition creating a new work.
'His methods of production are certainly of our time: statistics, data collection and analysis, computer programming. Yet he is dependent on craft as well: drawing, doodling, cutting and folding. Concepts are revealed and emerge through his interrogation, until they are utterly logical and clear. They are also inspiring, leading the viewer to a fresh understanding of an art that can be constructed from typography, opening onto a beautiful aesthetic composed of text as image.'
Esther Dudley, Lecturer in Design History, School of Art & Media Plymouth University.
