Scanitas

Tom Milnes is an artist, researcher, and curator. His practice explores the materiality of imagery and technology, engaging with the cultural impact of media through glitches, errors or hidden subcultures. His practice explores the aesthetics of imagery incorporating emergent technologies such as photogrammetry, augmented reality and NetArt methods, often through sculptural and photographic outputs, as ways to critically engage with our relationship to digital technology and the physical world.

For his solo show, SCANITAS, at Studio KIND, Tom Milnes displays a collection of 3D sculptural and 2D printed works exploring the thematics of glitched still-life images - a contemporary take on the ‘vanitas’ popular in 17th century Flemish painting.

Vanitas paintings focused on the symbolic impact of ‘vanity’ - in this context, referring to futility and pointlessness of material wealth. The objects depicted in vanitas often represent transient riches and ephemerality of life. Exotic fruits in decaying states, precious metal and glass craftware, beautiful dying flowers, and skulls. Objects depicted all represent the temporal existence of humanity. The Flemish vanitas works still hold high cultural significance, as they deal with the duality of human transience but also provide methods for revealing technological fragility and pointlessness too.

In SCANITAS, objects are also ephemeral or transitory in their relation to the image making technology as it struggles to understand them. They are objects that confuse the 3D scanning technology producing glitches, in doing so warping and stretching the sculptures and images. Many of these objects present in original vanitas’ still lives confuse the photogrammetric technology including anything transparent, reflective, complex, repetitive, patterned or bland. This provides an opportunity to create a contemporary vanitas that exposes the fragility and temporality of both humanity and technology.

The 3D works are presented as paper sculptures using techniques known as Pepakura, a hobbyist form of paper craft which takes 3D model and creates printable, flat nets of the object that can be cut, folded and stuck together to form 3D paper sculptures. The printed 2 works use glitched 3D model images and 3D scan textures to create layered collage works.

Milnes has exhibited internationally including at: W139 - Amsterdam , AND/OR - London, CEAC – Xiamen, The Centre for Contemporary Art Laznia - Gdansk, and Gyeonggi International Biennale - Korea. Milnes has recently curated the exhibition Rolodex Propaganda at KARST, Plymouth (April 2024) and completed Ashnihilation; a major public artwork commission for European Research Development Fund/Green Minds, which reimagines Plymouth’s relationship with nature through HoloLens augmented reality headsets. He is the curator of the online platform Polygon Palm.

This is the third collaboration between Studio KIND. and KARST whereby a studioholder at KARST is selected for a solo exhibition, encouraging artistic collaboration across North Devon and Plymouth. KARST was founded in 2012 by artists who wanted to develop an artist-led space in Plymouth to produce and show the best international contemporary art.

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