Mike Downing

Photographic Artist

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Viral Video

March 29, 2020 by mikedowninguk

A response to the self isolation/lock-down caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, beginning in enforceable terms on the 23rd of March in the UK. Here, trips outdoors were (are, as this is written in the midst of the new normal) permitted when shopping for essential food and supplies, a single form of outdoor exercise and for those considered ‘Key Workers’. This obviously included emergency services and medical staff, but also, less explicable – those working in car dealerships, sports shops and […]

Categories: Projects, Uncategorized, Work in Progress

Myths of the Union

April 23, 2019 by mikedowninguk

The British tabloid press has a long and antagonistic relationship with the EU and European Commission, frequently publishing misleading, misguided and histrionic articles with a tenuous relationship to fact. Consistently, the perceived Bureaucracy of Brussels is a target for mockery and incredulity, with British institutions bearing the brunt of ‘EU Meddling’. Frequently these stories contain a core of distorted truth. Referencing proposed changes in law and policy but selectively worded to erode confidence in European politics. While it may be […]

Categories: Projects, Work in Progress

Process

July 12, 2017 by mikedowninguk

From a short series of images that came about through an interest in the transformative aspect of the camera, the digital photographic process and the studio environment itself and the inevitable disappointment of the printed work. As someone who has, for many years wrestled with the dark arts of colour workflow – both as a practitioner and a teacher of photography. I became interested in the idea of bringing to life the process colours of cyan, magenta, yellow and black […]

Categories: Uncategorized

Accrual Media

May 14, 2016 by mikedowninguk

Accrual Media represents a digital ‘reshuffling’ of Roland Barthes’ perennial academic reading list favorite, Camera Lucida. Each page of the original publication has been scanned and subjected to a partially human guided application of Adobe’s “Space Time Video Completion” algorithm, put into action through Photoshop’s various Content Aware processes. These alterations prioritise the visual aspect of written language over the coded content and meaning, leading to repeated passages and words, altered letter forms and entirely new sentences or visual […]

Categories: Projects, Work in Progress

Pedestrian Encounters

October 25, 2015 by mikedowninguk

Mean and Median averages from a range of residents and visitors to Lincoln, 34 contributors on Saturday the 24th of October. Created in conjuction with Frequency, Lincoln’s Biannual Digital Arts and Culture Festival. Project produced in collaboration with Adam O’Meara.

Categories: Exhibition, Projects, Work in Progress • Tags: collaboration, Exhibition, Frequency, Ongoing, Project, Projects

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Animals of the Right

January 19, 2015 by mikedowninguk

Print on demand book which surveys the animals and pets of public Facebook profiles for self identifying British Far Right group ‘likers’. Available to purchase here

Categories: Projects • Tags: Blurb, Book, Cats, Dogs, Far Right, Print on Demand, Self Published, Tortoises

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Attractors / Abductors

June 19, 2014 by mikedowninguk

I know very little about fishing, the last time I partook in tricking fish onto a hook, admiring them and then returning them to their watery home, was as a child over twenty years ago. I do remember finding the paraphernalia fascinating, the rods, reels, floats, tubs of maggots and of course these lures. Each one is designed to replicate the movements, colours and habits of an existing prey – injured fish, swimming frogs, surface bound drowning flies – with […]

Categories: Projects • Tags: Fetish, Fish Hooks, Lures, Objects, Project, still life, studio

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Come Here, I Need You

September 3, 2013 by mikedowninguk

Site Specific installation featuring incidentally/accidentally triggered audio/visual ‘interuptions’ caused by the reception of celluar signals from observers and passers by. The project visualises the concept of ‘atmospheric data’ in the atmosphere through composite images of rural base station masts and mobile phone video. If you want to learn a little more about my thinking behind the piece Imperica magazine coaxed some answers out of me.

Categories: Exhibition, Projects

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For Decorative Use Only

April 30, 2013 by mikedowninguk

For Decorative Use Only was created as an illustration of a survey on 21st century rural village living in the Lincolnshire region. I wished to allow people to express their feelings on what it means to live in smaller communities and how that related to perceptions of the ‘idyll’. For every positive comment that praised community spirit, the quiet life and the beauty of the non-urban environment there was one damning nosy neighbours, close mindedness, lack of facilities or public […]

Categories: Projects • Tags: Projects, Publication

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Desense

April 30, 2013 by mikedowninguk

This multimedia body of work was created as a response to International broadcast news imagery, and the potentially diminished role it plays in an age of total image saturation. Sourced by culling every image from the BBC International website over a month long period in 2010, Desense takes its visual cues from the uncanny world of the paint swatch brochure. Desense comprised of an Installation, web based multimedia piece, printed output and ongoing screen based images.

Categories: Projects • Tags: Exhibition, Projects, Ways of Looking

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From here to paternity

February 22, 2013 by mikedowninguk

I recently became a father for the first time, a wonderful, if tiring experience (but nothing on motherhood) the image here illustrates three and a half days of nappies carefully pebble-dashed by a two week old baby boy. Curiously, by photographing the nappies in this origami-like way I have grown to look forward to every explosive bowel movement, a particularly loud artistic expression from my lovely lad could signal a diaper based Jackson Pollock. What delights await me after every […]

Categories: Projects • Tags: Baby, brown, grid, nappy, typology

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