The Big Four - Bob Bicknell-Knight and Rosa-Maria Nuutinen

About

The Big Four is an exhibition that considers the technological impact that humans have on the planet, considering the Big Four tech companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple) and how humans and new forms of technology continue to assist in major environmental change. The exhibition consists of new drawings, paintings and sculptural installations from Bob Bicknell-Knight and Rosa-Maria Nuutinen.

Bicknell-Knight will exhibit a new series of sculptures, built on and around a large floor installation. Developed to resemble a large battle like diorama, the different sculptures will include new ceramic pieces utilising the Big Four company logos, imagining a not so distant future where companies have created autonomous household pets, that play your favourite song, speak to you about your day and help you cook your dinner. The installation will function as a battleground between the different tech companies, with each corporation having it's own army of sculptures. Also featured will be a number of new paintings, positioning the autonomous beings within various environmental spaces, juxtaposing their mechanical bodies with the natural countryside.

Nuutinen will exhibit a new series of drawings, responding to Bicknell-Knight’s sculptures, imagining future scenarios whereby the pets have become fully autonomous, pulling themselves apart, forming gangs and ravaging the earth. Within the drawings, the autonomous beings become relics of our current world, where humans no longer exist but their technological creations continue to have an ongoing impact on the earth. Life is seen to continue forwards, with or without the presence of human beings.

Bob Bicknell-Knight (b. 1996, Suffolk, UK) is a London-based artist, curator and writer working in installation, sculpture, video and digital media. His work explores the divergent methods by which consumer capitalist culture permeates both online and offline society

Bicknell-Knight is also the founder and director of isthisit?, a platform for contemporary art, exhibiting over 800 artists since its creation in May 2016. Online, it operates as a gallery producing monthly exhibitions showcasing emerging to mid-career artists, hosting a roster of guest curators experimenting with the medium of the internet to interrogate a variety of concepts. The website also hosts monthly residencies, where artists are given a web page to create new work that exists on the internet as a piece of net art. Offline, it has held exhibitions nationally and internationally and is the publisher of isthisit?, a book series released on a yearly basis.

Selected solo exhibitions include State of Affairs at Salon 75, Copenhagen (2019), CACOTOPIA 02 at Annka Kultys Gallery, London (2018), Sunrise Prelude at Dollspace, London (2017) and Are we there yet? at Chelsea College of Art, London (2017). Selected group exhibitions include They Live at Platform Southwark, London (2019), To cite a body at Sluice HQ, London (2019), GROUND ZERO EARTH at Alison Richard Building, Cambridge (2019), Inside Intel at Goldsmiths, University of London, London (2018), Total Power Exchange at Galerie Manque, New York (2018), Paper Cuts at Saatchi Gallery, London (2018), Terms and Conditions May Apply at Annka Kultys Gallery, London (2018), The Museum Has Abandoned Us at State of the Art, Berlin (2017) and The Choice of a New Generation at The Muse Gallery, London (2017).

Rosa-Maria Nuutinen (b. 1992 in Hämeenlinna, Finland) is a London based artist working with a predominantly drawing based practice, concerned by ideas surrounding the post-human condition and how, in the future, humans will no longer be present but will leave behind an irreversible mark on our planet. Concepts such as cyborg bodies and biotechnology are present within the work, as Nuutinen is interested by the idea that humans, in order to maintain our current life style, rely heavily on technology in order to survive, creating complex technological mechanisms to continue living.