Attest you are human (Small Edition) Print

David Aston is a British artist (b.1975, Edinburgh) based in London. David secured his BA from Bath Spa University and interned with Bonhams as a fine art auctioneer. David's work is in UK and American collections and has been exhibited nationally and internationally in exhibitions including the Royal Academy of Arts, The Royal Scottish Academy, The London Group, Saatchi Art, and The Other Art Fair London & New York. In 2018 David was awarded a project by Saatchi Art to create Attest you are human (roll for humanity), a gamification for the Other Art Fair, New York, where he captured visitor attestations on what it means to be human in an age of machine intelligence. In 2019/20 David was long listed for The John Ruskin Prize, The Aesthetica Art Prize, A-N Mentoring Award, and published in Aesthetica Future Now Anthology of 100 international contemporary artist: https://aestheticamagazine.com/artists-profiles-2020/ David's art practice is inspired by the concept of diachronic and the way that language and culture has evolved through time. From dia- ‘through’ + Greek khronos ‘time’ + -ic. David's recent works act as markers for our transition from material past to technology and data fuelled future. They highlight the profound and sometimes humorous duality of our past, present and future and question our humanity and culture at a time of unprecedented change.  These multimedia works observe our transition to an age where we need to attest our humanity to machines, proclaim our rights to data, virtual assets and memory, question our collective cultural legacy through acts of digital archeology, and explore digital possibilities through hashtag muses. David's earlier sculptural photographic works explore themes of anonymity, commoditisation and copyright through the curation of anonymous 19th century social histories (ULOs, Unidentified Living Objects). Collected photographs are represented as postage stamps, re-packaged as modern point of sale consumables, t-shirts and made into playthings in antique slot machines. These early works also explore the potential for both copyright and copywrong in the reevaluation of historical and personal objects.  In the Muses series David draws upon his knowledge of early photographies to create timeless highly-choreographed photographic paintings which play with identity, place and time.