something/nothing Painting

Born 1982 Newcastle upon Tyne. Currently living in Newcastle after graduating with a first class BA/hons in fine art in 2004. He recently featured in DIGIT magazine under the title of 'New British Talent', after winning the NOISE festivals elements competition. Donohue states "My creative energy is fueled by a fascination with technological development, and its implications for the future. Technology can be used to empower individuals, and heighten creative freedom, but it can also be used for control and annihilation. It is the ambivalence and uncertainty of scientific progress that provides the catalyst for my work. I embrace the freedom of my imagination to celebrate and critique my experience of the world." His creative process involves making large installation works, which he then photographs and recycles into paintings and 2D mixed media imagery. When creating installations he likes to think of them as "machines that refuse to be repressed by reasons comprehension." Technology has been seized upon as a possible means to unite reason with imagination, and eradicate uncertainty. He hopes to mock our faith in technologies potential to create a coherent certain world. Donohue's work is not simply about naively labeling scientific progress as holistically negative, but recognising the positives in that which remains uncertain. The idea of the human mind as imperfect and incontrollable has influenced a desire for rational mastery over our own human nature. He likes to imagine us slaving over the development of artificial intelligence for thousands of years, using the language of science and the laws of reason, but always failing to compute our own human nature. Little do we know that intelligent thought dwells in the corner of a dark, damp, skip or with in a pile of rubbish hoarded in the back of an old mans garden like a mound of treasure. It lays waiting for the right moment to engulf us in our past technological conquests.
www.peoplelovemachines.co.uk www.scottdonohue.com