(click image for more details)Memorial to the Red Green Alliance, 2007
Lavazza Rosso packet, electrics and smashed automative glass
18cm x 10cm x 6cm
Aer Lingus (b), 2007
45cm x 39ccm
Nick Crowe is concerned with the effect that technology, cultural conventions, man-made and natural phenomena have on our lives today. Recent work has been particularly involved with an examination of the impact of the internet as an agent of social change, often alongside a use of glass as a contemporary artistic material.
In his 'Aer Lingus' series (2007), he presents us with stereotypical glamorised portraits of airhostesses etched onto framed glass. Sprouting from their mouths are speech bubbles containing spam email messages from contact agencies. Crowe utilises the material properties of glass – especially its ephemeral and reflective qualities – and its various cultural connotations to explore issues of remembrance, personal revelation, as well as larger political and historical events.
This work can be seen as inverting the received notion of both travel and the web as things that are meant to be enabling. Air travel is rarely a pleasurable experience today, often being fraught with delays, even threat and fear – air hostesses are there to act as our wardens as well as for our comfort. Likewise, although the internet has revolutionised the way we communicate with one another it has also exposed us to unwanted, sometimes sinister intrusions into our personal lives.
Paul Stone, 2008
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find out more about Paul Stone
