Work by Proseed Collective in Palazzo Bembo for Venice Biennale 2024

What do you say when you’re invited to make work for the Venice Biennale? Of course, the only response is “yes please”!

That’s what happened at the tail end of 2023, when artist and curator Daniel Ibbotson asked me for two pieces so that he could choose one to curate with the other artists in his collective. Daniel started the Proseed Collective during the pandemic for local artists to continue to show work in those strange times. He exhibited solo in Venice at the 2022 Biennale, and had decided to make something bigger and better by finding a group of artists to exhibit there in the 2024 event, under the Proseed Collective – Venice 24 banner in association with the European Cultural Centre.

The brief was simple: Daniel asked 40 artists to contribute work sized 500 x 500mm on the theme of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Stranieri Ovunque — Foreigners Everywhere.

As an artist more used to dealing with subjects that do not cross into social concerns, the title completely stumped me for some weeks. Until I watched Coded Bias, a documentary film about surveillance and the algorithms that society is increasingly subject to. As a software guy, I understand the technologies that lie behind the film’s subject matter, and recognise the role it plays in our determination of who is, and is not, considered a “foreigner”.

And what followed was months of trying out new processes to make a work that I could “see” somewhat clearly in my head, but which refused to materialise. I wanted to incorporate thinking about “power” and who gets to decide who belongs, with the technology that is increasingly used to stand in for human decision-making.

My early research included visits to the collection of pre-renaissance work at the Scottish National Gallery to look at the role of religious choices about people’s status in society, which led me down a path of learning how to use gold leaf for gilding. The technology behind today’s means of categorising people tends to start with facial recognition, a powerful process that is freely available for use at almost no cost.

My final two pieces for submission to the collective are based on portrait photographs that I took many years ago, subjected to facial recognition technology and plotted onto metallic boards using a robotic pen plotter. The pieces are completed with the application of gold and silver leaf.

Palazzo Bembo, one of the venues for the ECC’s Personal Structures exhibition

Ultimately, the silver version stayed in the UK while my gold grid was packaged up to be delivered into Palazzo Bembo by water taxi for the opening of the show.

Facial x 9, now hung in Palazzo Bembo. Ink, acrylic paint, gold leaf on board, partly robot-drawn

Detail of Facial x 9

Facial x 9 in situ at Palazzo Bembo

The one that got away: Facial x 4