Individuals

Dr Simon Ingram

Senior Lecturer - Elam School of FIne Art, National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries -  The University of Auckland

Telephone:	+64 9 3737599 ext 89997
Address:	Main Fine Arts Building Building 431, Level 1 The University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand s.ingram@auckland.ac.nz

Research Interests:

Visual Arts and Media

painting

Publications:

Project keywords: algorithmic art, painting, artificial life, social complexity, emergence, modernism.

Simon Ingram's work interprets the modernist practice of the autonomous, self-made artwork in relation to painting as a constructional and computationally based self-organising system. His practice articulates itself in three distinct lines of work: machines made from Lego robotics and generic constructional materials that paint autonomously in oil paint with a brush; paintings made by the artist that use artificial life systems as a method to govern composition and decision making; and video work related to the production of self-making painting machines. Drawing on divergent strands of knowledge (artificial life, painting, critical theory, software), the project re-stages and reinvents painting as a critical, contemporary project that explores painting’s conceptual signification while remaining resolutely fabricational.

With the machines, Simon Ingram customises off-the shelf Lego to make self-making paintings that expose hand-made painterly gesture to a model of painting that is mechanistic and electronic but which maintains dialogue with certain gritty, material and traditional givens in the practice of painting such as makerly thickness, gesture and support. Painting Assemblage No.6, on show at Victoria University of Wellington’s Adam Art Gallery and Auckland University of Technology’s St Paul Street Gallery in September 2007, appropriated the gallery as studio to paint an algorithmically generated T-square fractal. Attached to the gallery wall, and clutching its brush, the machine’s “paint head” travelled over a 2 x 2 metre raw linen canvas painting each stroke in thick white oil colour, periodically dipping its brush into a dripping Lego paint pot. Although the format of the fractal was determined by the machine’s software, the sequence of brush strokes and decisions on their length and density were generated on-the-fly and in relation to the moment-to-moment life of the painting – all of which contributed to the complex visual field of the paintings produced which were pictorially lyrical and dense yet produced entirely by a machine over the course of the exhibition.

In 2009 his work features in three exhibitions: "Boing Boom Tschak" at Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland; “Pulse Contemporary Art Fair, New York; "Drunken Walk in Brussels" at CCNOA, Brussels and “The Function of the Studio” at Stedefreund, Berlin. In 2008 his work featured in six local and international exhibitions: "Minus Space" at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA, Long Island City, New York; "Yo Yo Modernism" at CCNOA, Center for Contemporary Non-objective art, Brussels; "My Eyes Keep me in Trouble" at The Physics Room, Christchurch; "200 KünstlerInnen aus 18 Ländern" at Gesellschaft für Kunst, Bonn; "Drawing for an autopoietical painting -- Monochrome in C (2005) with Monochrome in K" at A Centre for Art, Auckland; "Julian Dashper - 1994, 2001, 2008, Simon Ingram - 1996, 2002, 2008, Salvatore Panatteri - 1998, 2003, 2008" at Newcall Gallery, Auckland. In 2007 his work featured in four public gallery exhibitions in New Zealand: "Just Painting" at Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland; "Four Times Painting" at Victoria University of Wellington’s Adam Art Gallery, Wellington; "The Secret Life of Paint" at Dunedin Public Art Gallery; "PX: A Purposeless Production/A Necessary Praxis" at Auckland University of Technology’s St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland. Simon Ingram is represented in Auckland by Gow Langsford Gallery and is a Senior Lecturer at Elam School of Fine Art at The University of Auckland. His work is held in key New Zealand collections such those of Jenny Gibbs, Glenn Schaeffer and the Chartwell and Fletcher Trusts. Over the last few years he has been awarded a University of Auckland Best Doctoral Thesis Award, a Francis Hodgkins Fellowship and a Creative New Zealand New Work Grant.

Bibliographies / Databases:

http://www.youtube.com/paintingthatthinks

http://collection.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/simpleSearch.jsp

http://www.chartwell.org.nz

http://dunedin.art.museum/exhibitions.asp

http://www.vuw.ac.nz/adamartgal/

http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/about/news/articles/2007/04/ingram.cfm

http://www.minusspace.com/artists.htm

http://www.canarygallery.com/120705.htm

http://www.satellitesh.com

http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2006/07/16/notes-from-computational-aesthetics-at-aaai/"

http://www.mop.org.au/archive/040915.html