Matthew Johnstone – Totally Unprofessional

12th October – 18th November 2012

Matthew Johnstone's work is concerned with trends in technoculture and reciprocity between the scientific basis of technological change and its aestheticization. Forms of production, management and consumption of material and immaterial goods brought by new technologies reshape the way we perceive and conceive reality.

Forms are constantly altered, influenced, enhanced, synthesised and/or edited versions of forms. By repurposing technological tools through their de-specialised application means are provided to reevaluate simple affects of technology encountered on even the most banal level.

Johnstone's practice utilises material familiar to contemporary image culture that “already has context and meaning”. This material is often layered with heavily processed elements and intentionally ‘domestic’ production, such as laboriously hand-crafted sculpture reformatted for the screen. Modes of commercial display are used to present this carefully sourced material creating strange inversions of the works' formal attributes, both in individual elements and its overall composition.

Matthew Johnstone (UK, 1981) studied at Goldsmiths College, completing the MFA Art Practice program in 2010. Exhibitions include; Photographs & Slideshows – Jerwood Visual Arts project space [solo], Bunker Mentality – The Bunker [both London] and Rose Street Film Programme – Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh [all 2012], Waiting for Suicidal Hares ‘International Video Art Festival’, Chongqing, China, Channel 8 – Carter Presents,, London, Proto- Bla Elevator Gallery, London and Filmstationen, Copenhagen [all 2011].