Monthly Archives: September 2024

September 2024

Circle II

On Saturday 21 September at 3pm, Emma Hill is chairing an artists’ talk for the Pollen Collective at Kindred Studios: 14 Market Lane, London W12 8EZ, to discuss their exhibition Circle II

Circle II is multi disciplinary show by 17 artists that presents a related chain of unique art works prompted by an initial AI image that was created using the word prompts: fire, flower, time, sun, balloon and games. Working spontaneously over two-week periods, each artist responded to the previous artist’s work, without context or explanation. The subtle and intuitive connections between the responses offer a fascinating insight into how the human imagination ranges in unexpected ways. 

‘Artificial intelligence will affect almost every aspect of human life. It is already integrated into many elements of our daily existence, and it is quite clear that as yet we have very little understanding of how it can be mediated. As the scientist Gary Marcus (who in May 2023 was called to give evidence to the US Senate judiciary subcommittee meeting on AI oversight) describes it is a “dual-use” technology, that holds tremendous promise but also has ‘the potential to cause tremendous harm – from tsunamis of misinformation to enabling the proliferation of new bioweapons’. The highly disturbing events of the last weeks in the UK have provided a chilling example of just how effectively bad actors can manipulate the technologies through which we are communicating.

The Pollen Collective’s decision to base their project on an image generated by an AI programme was born, in part, out of a sense that while technological systems have greatly aided artists to expose and disseminate their work over recent years, there has been a marked change in how some people now interact with art (and by extension other forms of communication), moving away from the material and tangible, towards a solely screen-based experience. This, coupled with ongoing debates about how AI might encroach upon an individual’s creativity, seemed fertile territory to explore.’

(Extract from Emma Hill’s text for Circle II. Gary Marcus quoted from an article in the Guardian,

3 August 2024) www.pollen-collective.co.uk


Julia Farrer: A Throw of the Dice

Art Space Gallery, London is hosting a solo exhibition of Julia Farrer’s recent paintings from 6 September – 18 October. A 40 page catalogue with text by Brendan Prendeville has been published for the occasion. www.artspacegallery.co.uk


Fragile Stories: Mandy Bonnell and Déirdre Kelly

We are delighted that the Fragile Stories has been very well received, with the most recent international review citing Bonnell’s unique artist’s book, Imparaticci, as:

‘A work with a conceptual matrix in which the memory of the creative act is always poised between emergence and disappearance. (Manuela de Leonardis: Alias / ‘il manifesto’, Saturday 3 August 2024).

The exhibition continues until 8 January 2025

Museo del Merletto, Burano, Piazza Galuppi, 187, 30142 Venezia (VE) Italy www.museomerletto.visitmuve.it 10.00 – 16.00 Closed Monday