David Cotterrell: Monsters of the Id.

This week's teaching offered me and the rest class the amazing opportunity to visit the John Hansard Gallery at Southampton University where we got a private viewing to David Cotterrell's Monsters of the Id.

The exhibition consists of four consecutive installations that follow on from one another overlooking the landscape of the Helmand Province in Afghanistan. The exhibition uses infrared technology to track the presence of individuals where a computer inputs the data, this is then mathematically processed and sent to a projector where the information is fed into the installations. 

Observer effect, 2012.

Searchlight 2, 2012.

From mapping the figures in real time to migrating them from one landscape to another Cotterrell’s work seems to revolve heavily around the different perspectives of the landscape. Monsters of the Id was inspired by the political view of the Helmand Province where the artist wanted to portray an alternative view to this exotic landscape. Being a pacifist Cotterrell’s aim was to display the change in political stance, the concept that we accept politics is complex, a shallow reproduction of our lives which is often superficial. Cotterrell later goes on to say:

“We have a tendency of believing stuff when we don’t have the opportunity of going as we won’t be able to test it, a mixture of confusion and complexity.”