'BUILD'

Stacey Righton

30th November - 14th December, The Proctor Gallery, Camborne

Just over a year ago as part of Wheal Art, Stacey Righton worked in and with the landscape: a rich and ready source of romanticism, nostalgia and emotion. For her 'BUILD' residency at Cornwall College, however, she made art using something rather more inert and unyielding: ordinary everyday office equipment.

In the hallway of the Proctor gallery were 4 large monochrome drawings with black powdery surfaces made with the toner from printer cartridges. Somewhere between charcoal drawings and Man Ray's photograms, both the feet of the artist and the internal parts of computers and computer peripherals were visible. Despite the neutrality of the subject matter, there was a hint of gleeful release in these works and a feeling that they represented a small luddite rebellion against information technology.

A similar refusal to play by the rules was apparent in 'Automatic Thinking Machine' in which a computer keyboard was used to convey the artists thoughts. Instead of typing readable words, however, all that was available to the visitor was the sound of the typing relayed to a small speaker (itself taken from a computer) in the main hall outside. The presence of the artist was more insistent and persuasive in this work: part of a primitive cybernetic system, the subtle tapping sound was like indecipherable morse code and a metaphor, perhaps, for Ryles' 'Ghost in the machine'.