Art Exhibition: Glut: Images, Information & Excess at The Holden Gallery

The Holden Gallery’s commitment over recent years, to bring world-class artists within the historical walls of the Manchester School of Art’s dedicated exhibition space, continues with this look at the diverse effects of technological advances in information capture. Surveillance is a key theme throughout the show. James Bridle’s Every CCTV Camera bookends the exhibition, and is made up of two giant grids of photographs depicting the many types of surveillance camera. This work establishes the ‘glut’ of the title, which also finds particular resonance in the work of Thomson and Craighead. Firstly, with the often giggle inducing Beacon, in which live web searches are continuously relayed as they are being made around the world, and another of their pieces in the show, a longitudinal stop motion film called Six years of Mondays. Esther Hovers (see image) presents False Positives, ingenious photographs that take as inspiration the anomalies in human behaviour smart surveillance cameras are programmed to alert authorities to. The work of the remaining two artists, James Richards and Viktoria Binschtok, makes use of the glut of images technological advances has produced by bringing together material from diverse sources to make something new.

Mon 16 Jan – Fri 3 Mar, Manchester Metropolitan University, Grosvenor Building, Cavendish Street, Manchester, M15 6BR, Mon-Fri 10am-4.30pm, FREE, www.holdengallery.mmu.ac.uk

Image: Esther Hovers – Overview E