Alt-w | Digital Play : Wendy McMurdo Collected Works 1995 - 2012
Cycle 06 Alt-w Production Award -
Wendy McMurdo & Paul Holmes
www.wendymcmurdo.com
28th June to 17th August 2014, Tues-Sun, 10am-5pm.
Street Level Photoworks, Trongate 103, Glasgow G1 5HD
Photographer Wendy McMurdo focuses on the relationship between technology and identity expressed through the images and ideas of childhood. She looks at the psychological world of children and young people, both as a protected space and, increasingly, as a ground for marketing wars and a prematurely forced adulthood.
Part of the nationwide GENERATION programme, Digital Play is a major solo exhibition that spans a period from 1995 to 2012. The exhibition includes The Skater, a series of large scale photographic works not seen together in Scotland before and The Loop - an Alt-w Fund supported film made in conjunction with Paul Holmes in 2009.
5th August to 5th September 2009, Wed-Sun, 10am-6pm.
Inspace, Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB
Exploring the impact of virtual technology on the lives of the young, Wendy McMurdo's photographic work, and her Alt-w funded collaboration with filmmaker Paul Holmes, study interactivity through the theme of skaters at once real, manipulated and beautifully mimicked.
They are joined by a series of portraits of young gamers at play immersed in a highly mediated world. These poised figures allude to how personal identity is formed in a virtual environment – where fantasy slides into reality and back again, within the looped world of the game.
According to Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Children grow up in a culture of video games, action films, fantasy epics, and computer programs that all rely on that familiar scenario of almost losing but then regaining total mastery: There is danger. It is mastered. A still-more-powerful monster appears. It is subdued. Scary. Safe."
This new body of work explores this disturbing dichotomy, examining the relationship and polarities – between traditional and digital recreation – and our need to play and explore both the scary and the safe.
17th January to 1st March 2009.
Ffotogallery, Plymouth Road, Penarth, CF64 3DM
Commissioned by Ffotogallery Wales and supported New Media Scotland's Alt-w Fund
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