Allen Laing
Safe-space lignin lens
Mind Blowing Selfie Sword (you won't believe number three!)
Cellphone Holder
1800 x 500 x 500
Rat city designed by a committee
Artist Response
"I've noticed that artists of my generation are intensely influenced by the response to their work on social media, in particular on Instagram."
One is inclined to create artworks similar to those that previously garnered many ‘likes’ on the online platform. This self-reinforcing behaviour is similar to that seen in rats inside an Operant Conditioning Chamber. The rats are slowly conditioned (using light, sound and levers) to perform certain actions to the extent that their behaviour becomes unhealthy or obsessive.
In an attempt to understand this phenomenon, I exaggerate it and draw attention to the synthetic nature of people’s interactions on social media. I create a ‘game’ which allows members of the public to directly dictate my actions and decide what I add or remove to a sculpture.
It is interesting how the long, unwieldy chain of communication affected my interaction with the audience, who spoke to me via facilitators. Many people watched, but only other artists really participated.
bio
I was born in Pretoria in 1990, and graduated from the University of Pretoria with distinction in 2012.
Two years later I relocated to the Nirox Sculpture Park where I spent an extended period in residency making my own art, and producing work for other artists from Lagos, New York, Berlin and London.
In 2018 I graduated Cum Laude from the MFA programme at the University of Johannesburg, and was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal for the most meritorious study in the faculty. The following year I received the Ampersand Fellowship and an opportunity to spend a month on residency in New York City. Since 2017 my studio has been based in Pretoria at Dionysus Sculpture Works.
My work Advocate of Nature (2017) is housed in the permanent collection of the WITS Art museum, and Bookmatch Book (2018) forms part of the collection at the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts. Oniomanic Mammonic Manual (2017) is held in the Johannesburg City Library’s Michaelis Collection and Coffee Machine(2016) is in the Modern Arts Projects Museum in Richmond, Northern Cape. Other works are housed in prominent private collections around South Africa.
