Wk 14 - Artist models: Nicholas Mangan & Shaun Waugh
- annabensky
- Jun 9, 2022
- 5 min read
Nicholas Mangan
Nicholas Mangan is a multidisciplinary artist who frequently works in sculpture and film and whose practice explores the relationship between culture and nature, particularly within the Asia Pacific region. Through his sculptural works, Mangan explores the material histories of objects and their contexts, and reassembles them to illustrate latent narratives and meanings within them.
Nicholas Mangan, Termite Economies (Root Cause) (detail), 2019. Bronze, steel and ply table and custom lighting. Dimensions variable
Of his works that I've looked into, Terminte Economies intrigue me in particular:
[The exhibition] Neural Nodes and Root Causes is the most recent iteration of Nicholas Mangan’s ongoing project, Termite Economies, in which constructed systems, based on termite behaviours, show connections between labour, consumption and digestion. In the first phase Mangan identified subterranean goldmines as lived sites of these interactions. His new work gestures towards neural and biological systems to explore ‘nature as a participatory “mentor” of engineering…leaving open the possibility of a new industrialism that is more attuned to nature’s needs’.
Recent neuroscience has rejected the brain as a centralised organ of control, in favour of cerebral plasticity – the notion that our brains are ‘formable’ and ‘formative’ at the same time. In her essay, ‘What Should We Do with Our Brain?’ Catherine Malabou emphasizes how the study of brain functioning and systems of power and social organisation are connected. In the same way that we now understand neuronal connections to be supple, political and economic hegemonies might also be re-routed to produce new potentials.
Mangan braids these perspectives with termite stigmergy*, swam behaviour and biomimicry, which have long been used in software development to conceptualise wireless and distributed technology and has informed current deep learning neural network machine learning.
To create these new sculptures, Mangan utilised algorithms that were modelled on the collective swarming behaviour of termites. Root Causes, 2019, is the result of mapping these root-like neural cleavages and folds in digital space to produce a 3D printed form. This form was then burnt out in the foundry as an endocast to provide the hollow tunnels for a new, bronze sediment. For Neural Nest (slice), 2019, installed at Sutton Projects, Mangan mapped these algorithmic patterns on to 3D models of human neural nodes obtained through Monash University’s Department of Neuroscience. Here, the hypertrophied brain is a diagram not only for building new neural pathways but perhaps for re-routing/reassembling larger social systems.
* Stigmergy is a biological term used when discussing a sub-set of insect swarm-behaviour describing the apparent organisation seen during their activities.
Nicholas Mangan, Termite Economies (Neural Nodes and Root Causes), 2020. nstallation view, Sutton Gallery
It is curious seeing how Mangan goes about creating his work in light of the idea of "nature as a participatory "mentor" for engineering" - in bridging the fields of engineering and fabrication with naturally occurring systems of organization, the possibilities of organically informed design are illustrated as are the industrious systems already present in nature (those of the termites in building their nests). The parallels between organic systematization and modern engineering are visible in the structures Mangan creates, opening up space for the contemplation of both without purely illustrating either in its original format or being overly derivative. In exploring the meeting of the two, I think the most interesting things start to occur. These concepts are visualized in new forms that are both organic and artificial in nature.
Shaun Waugh
This particular installation of Waugh's, Encounter, was suggested to me as an example of potential installation strategies. The optical illusion of three-dimensionality in the images on the left in combination with the overlaid images on the neighbouring wall explore the relationship between photography, installation and understanding of the "real". The work highlights the tensions between imagery and the world represented within it, along with the slippages and deceptions that can take place in the relationship between the two.
Exhibition view: Shaun Waugh, Encounter, Two Rooms, Auckland (4 June–3 July 2021). Courtesy Two Rooms.
From Ocula:
In 2021, our encounters are perhaps as much with images as they are with other beings, objects and phenomena. Images not only stand in for things, but have taken on increasingly complicated and multifaceted lives of their own. Despite their complexity and their often contradictory operations – both online and offline – we are forced to interpret and use them in order to navigate our way through everyday life.
Waugh's photographs critically interrogate the frontiers presented by emergent technologies and their profound impact on the medium. His images confront us with representations which are not as certain as they may first appear, prompting us to reconsider and redefine what constitutes contemporary photography and its shifting implications and effects.
Waugh has recently had a son which has also influenced his work. Here we might find a parallel in Waugh watching the two year old's first experiences with the world around him, and the artist's photographs which present us with subjects at one strange and familiar. In its focus on domestic situations – his son's immediate world – there is an accessible, everyday feel to Encounter. Yet on further inspection, apparently straightforward photographs of backyard lemon and kawakawa trees and a child's brightly coloured toy blocks are revealed as highly constructed and complex.
Waugh employs the technique of focus stacking, a recent software script in Adobe Photoshop which creates composites of multiple images captured at different focal lengths into a single image. Focus stacking allows Photoshop to computationally interpret and combine an array of images (with the same framing and differing focal points) into a unique convincing hybrid with a depth of field which a single frame could never achieve. The artist, however, works against the illusionistic imperative of the software, pushing it to produce digital artefacts and aberrations. In short, Waugh forces the software to reveal itself while creating new forms of imaging in the process.
Waugh's largest work in the exhibition, Ruse (v), is a panoramic image of what appears to be an abundant lemon tree printed on adhesive vinyl and wrapped across two gallery walls. One framed photographic print – a kind of detail – is hung on top of the vinyl wall image. At this scale, the lemons are larger than life, taking on a slightly surreal quality. Further scrutiny reveals that a verdant kawakawa has been blended with the lemon tree – a digital hybrid and a ruse indeed.
The software doesn't see leaves or lemons, it sees pixel information. The artist drives the software to attempt a task it can never fully accomplish – a synthesis of irreconcilable images of two different species. Forms blend, layers multiply, edges blur and fracture – the image coming together just as it is falling apart. The organic surface markings and discolouration of the foliage and fruit further echo the digital artefacts. The holes in the kawakawa leaves read as apertures, revealing layers beneath while complicating the appearance of other forms when computationally blended together. The depth of the composite photograph appears strangely shallow – a kind of overgrown, energetic visual field – immersive and perhaps more intoxicating the longer one looks.
The process Waugh undertakes in creating these works mirrors what I've been exploring with digital assemblage and LIDAR scanning in my own practice, and it is interesting seeing a description of this digital process. Describing this relationship between perception, capture, coherence and digitality has been difficult for me to do.
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