A map of America made up of upcycled computer components commissioned by BlackRock Investments, courtesy of TAG Fine Arts.

A motherboard is a collection of arteries, designed for information and electricity to travel along, it is a map. To then transform a collection of these electronic maps into a geographical and topographical map was an obvious creative leap for me. The raw materials lend themselves to topographical references, full of colour and grid forms they offer an alterenative visual language. A subversion of their original design intention that becomes a playful visual metaphor, looping back to the the raw material the sources of our digital lives. Despite the fundamental seriousness of the concepts the work is witty, humorous and beautiful.

"The computer components are transformed into a sculpture that highlights the materials beauty. They are dissected, their innards exposed, revealing the underbelly of the machines we take for granted, an autopsy of our consumer society. Stockwell chooses these ‘commodity’ materials because in her words they contain Stains of Existence and act as ready-made signifiers which she can sculpt and interweave in ways that delicately reveal their obscured politics and hidden beauty."

The Curator Grace Chung describes Susan's work,

"Accumulation, transformation, detritus, debris, everyday materials are all recurrent themes in Stockwell’s work. Meticulously hand crafted, the benign sublime beauty in the work belies the devastating effects of our culture and our role in shaping it. Look more closely, and one is confronted by a cultural urgency of global-proportions. Political and cultural colonization, globalize waste and consumption are reconfigured by Stockwell’s work into a new festering eco system of meaning that slowly seeps like the rising ocean level."

From the text for the exhibition B-side Ecology at MIMI Space, the Hong's Foundation for Education and Culture, Taipei, Taiwan 2008.

The computer materials for America 2 were genarously supplied by iwaste

Exhibitions:

Vulnerable Ecologies The Art League, Houston, Texas USA

Collections:

Black Rock Investments Art Collection (courtesy TAG Fine Arts), New York, USA

Computer Works

Susan Stockwell