Mike Downing

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

Leave a comment

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

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

Liminal Spaces

February 22, 2013 by mikedowninguk

Co-Production with Adam O’Meara, Ongoing work in progress 2012 – Present. Images produced in response to the Higher Education work/study environment.

Categories: Projects, Work in Progress • Tags: black and white, collaboration, eduction, film, Project, square, work in progress

Leave a comment

Plastic Vanitas

July 6, 2012 by mikedowninguk

A study after the Dutch masters of still life and the vanitas, entirely in plastic. Where Claesz and his contemporaries set out to highlight the transience of life and futility of object based wealth, this vanitas set entirely in cheap plastic considers objects, which in their organic form would be fleeting – subject to decay and the ravages of time. Their plastic counterparts, however are practically immortal, destined to outlive their owners and manufacturers in landfill. This is a most […]

Categories: Standalones • Tags: still life, studio, vanitas, work in progress

Leave a comment

NoGo

March 6, 2012 by mikedowninguk

Categories: Projects, Work in Progress

Leave a comment

Failed Heirlooms

February 20, 2012 by mikedowninguk

Failed Heirlooms is an interactive, magnetic exhibition that attempts to get away from the conventions of contemporary gallery based imagery. It presents the audience with a large scale display comprised of several hundred individual postcards representing objects seen as ‘failed heirlooms’; things that have been deemed unworthy of value, either financial or emotional. These objects find themselves part of an antiques sprawl, divorced from their original owners and collections. The exhibition can be rearranged almost indefinitely and the audience is […]

Categories: Projects • Tags: Exhibition, Projects

Leave a comment

Tuberverse

February 20, 2012 by mikedowninguk

Each of these ‘planets’ is a simple trompe l’oeil, a potato or other root vegetable, the roundest I can find, is simply colour treated and photographed suspended (and indeed orbiting) on fishing line. Each of these heavenly bodies is easily imagined to contain their own unique atmosphere and ecosystem, from gas giants, to frozen planetoids. A mighty destiny for the humble potato, The imperfections that we seek to breed out of the tuber as more aesthetically pleasing food is called […]

Categories: Projects • Tags: Exhibition, Ongoing, Projects

Leave a comment

Newer posts →