Simon Morse's solo show presents an array of machines whose pragmatic origins and intended uses point to their, and our, tragicomic undoing.

Like the series of systemic derangements, both human and automated, in Stanley Kubrick's film Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Bomb, the objects in the exhibition appear to exist and operate within entirely rational parameters. Upon closer inspection however, their potential functions describe a world in which expediency has caused the languages of control and the machineries of discourse to become kaleidoscopically self-entangled through doomed attempts to create and maintain literal and metaphorical power structures.

The work asks if it is humanly possible to imagine a way out of this situation any more. Have we indeed passed a moment of 'peak thought', when the perils created via our technologies, our languages, have overtaken and corralled our ability to come up with dependable solutions?

In the tradition of the great satirists, Morse uses his work to fold the crazed logic of our time back in on itself, creating an exponentially skewed reality attuned with precision to the absurdities of its context.

Simon Morse was born in Swindon, England in 1969. He studied at Liverpool Polytechnic (BA Fine Art 1989-92) and Chelsea College of Art and Design (MA Fine Art 1992-3). He has exhibited widely in the UK, and also in the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and Spain. He lives and works in London.

images opposite, from the top:

Installation shots
Usurper, 2007
Marginal Constituency, 2007
Muinom, 2008
LMNO Panic Receipt & Obsback Module, 2008
Accour Complete Recovery Kit, 2008

Images of all work is available as a pdf file (1.6MB)