Thomson & Craighead

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Jon Thomson (born 1969) and Alison Craighead (born 1971) are London-based visual artists, who work with video, sound and the internet.

Life and work[edit]

Jon Thomson was born in London, England and Alison Craighead in Aberdeen, Scotland.

They have been working together with video, sound and the internet since 1993.[1] Much of their work to date explores how technology changes the way we perceive the world around us.[2] They use live data to make artworks, including "template cinema online artworks"[3] and gallery installations,[4] where networked movies are created in real time from online material such as remote-user security web cams, audio feeds and chat room text transcripts.

Recently (as of 2008) they have made outdoor semi-permanent works, Decorative Newsfeeds[5] and BEACON,[6] where the emphasis is on live virtual information. In BEACON, data is projected onto gallery walls, interacting with viewers' physical space. In 2008 they made an animated documentary, Flat Earth,[7] where the voices of bloggers found online are combined with public domain satellite imagery.

In 2005 they won Arts Foundation award,[8] and were fellows at the MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire in Autumn 2004.[9]

"Here", viewed from east, with Canary Wharf district in background

Created by Thomson & Craighead, Here is a 2013 artwork formed by a standard 2.64m tall UK road sign pointing north from a riverside path in east London and displaying the 24,859 mile distance around the circumference of the earth back to the sign's position.[10][11] Maggie Gray in art magazine Apollo said: "Such pieces command attention and, once they have it, direct that attention outwards to their surroundings, or back on to the viewer."[12] In 2014, it was one of nine works chosen from over 70 submissions for The Line,[13] an art project distributed along a three-mile route following some of London's waterways between Stratford and North Greenwich.[14] The route opened in 2015.[15][16]

Thomson is Professor of Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.[17] Craighead is currently Reader at the University of Westminster,[18] and also lectures in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Exhibitions[edit]

Exhibitions include 'Maps DNA and Spam' at Dundee Contemporary Arts; Never Odd nor even at Carroll / Fletcher Gallery London; Tate Britain;[19] San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SFMOMA;[20] Laboral Art Centre in Gijon, Spain;[21] Zentrum Kunst Media ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; The New Museum, New York; Mejanlabs, Stockholm; Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase, New York.[22]

Notes and references[edit]

  1. ^ "Organisation, artist collective, Thomson & Craighead [GB]". V2. 2002. Retrieved 2007-10-01. [dead link]
  2. ^ "40 Artists, 40 Days, Thomson & Craighead". Tate. 2005. Retrieved 2007-10-01.
  3. ^ "Template Cinema Online". Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead. 2004. Retrieved 2007-10-01.
  4. ^ "Short Films about Flying (a template cinema installation)". Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead. 2002. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  5. ^ "Decorative Newsfeeds (Outdoor version at The Junction in Cambridge)". Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead. 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  6. ^ "BEACON (Railway flap sign at British Film Institute on London's Southbank)". Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead. 2007. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  7. ^ "Flat Earth (A desktop documentary)". Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead. 2007. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  8. ^ "Arts Foundation, Fellows Archive". Arts Foundation. 2005. Archived from the original on 2007-12-31. Retrieved 2008-04-07.
  9. ^ "The MacDowell Colony index of fellows". The MacDowell Colony. 2004. Archived from the original on 2007-12-04. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
  10. ^ "Thomson & Craighead". The Line. 2 March 2020. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  11. ^ "Walking The Line". Artichoke. 15 January 2021. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
  12. ^ Gray, Maggie (4 June 2020). "Lessons from a lonely city – walking through lockdown London has been a revelation". Apollo. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
  13. ^ "Gary Hume Liberty Grip, 2008". The Line. 6 March 2020. Retrieved 2 August 2021.
  14. ^ Jury, Louise (11 July 2014). "New sculpture trail, The Line, to appear along east London's waterways". Evening Standard. Retrieved 2 August 2021.
  15. ^ "The Line". Time Out London. 2 August 2019. Retrieved 2021-06-07.
  16. ^ McCabe, Katie (28 April 2020). "London's first public art walk The Line goes online". Time Out London. Retrieved 2021-06-07.
  17. ^ "Slade School of Fine Art : Academic Staff". University College London. 2007. Archived from the original on 2008-01-24. Retrieved 2007-10-01.
  18. ^ "School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages". University of Westminster. 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-01.
  19. ^ "Art and Money Online, Tate Britain". Tate. 2001. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
  20. ^ "010101 Art in Technological Times, SFMOMA". SFMOMA. 2001. Archived from the original on 2007-10-29. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
  21. ^ "Feedback at Laboral Arts Centre, Spain". Laboral Arts Centre. 2007. Archived from the original on 2007-10-20. Retrieved 2008-04-07.
  22. ^ "New Media: Where? Neuberger Museum of Art". Nueberger Museum of Art. 2006. Retrieved 2008-04-03.

External links[edit]

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