Aphra Shemza & Stuart Batchelor
shemza.digital, 2020
Interactive digital painting application | www.shemza.digital/paint
The shemza.digital project is based on the work of Aphra Shemza’s grandfather, the well known British/Pakistani painter Anwar Jalal Shemza. In the last 10 years there has been a rethinking of British Art History and migrant artists like Anwar Jalal Shemza are being given the recognition that they deserve. In shemza.digital Aphra Shemza and Stuart Batchelor have used participatory art as a way to highlight Anwar Shemza’s work to the public and ask them to become actively involved in artmaking by becoming artists themselves.
For shemza.digital Shemza and Batchelor have created a digital painting application that is hosted online, where the public is invited to create their own digital paintings and submit them to the online archive. The artworks submitted to the archive will be turned into a light art installation later this year.
Aphra Shemza
shemza.digital #6, 2021
Interactive light sculpture
2.1 x 0.5 x 0.5 m
Recycled Green Cast Acrylic, LED and bespoke circuit
Programming by Jamie Howard
The shemza.digital project is based on the work of Aphra Shemza’s grandfather, the well known British/Pakistani painter Anwar Jalal Shemza. In the last 10 years there has been a rethinking of British Art History and migrant artists like Anwar Jalal Shemza are being given the recognition that they deserve. In shemza.digital Aphra Shemza has used participatory art as a way to highlight Anwar Shemza’s work to the public.
In shemza.digital #6, the viewer is invited to interact with a column borrowed from Shemza’s City Wall series. Here Aphra Shemza has turned Shemza’s 2D concept which he based on Islamic architecture into something physical again that can be felt and experienced by the viewer. The ultrasonic sensors of shemza.digital #6, measure the visitor’s distance from the work and on approaching the archway the viewer’s presence makes the lights illuminate, enticing the viewer to interact with the piece. The viewers’ physical interactivity turns them into active, connected participants and this not only further develops the work but creates it: the closer they get, the more they see. Shemza.digital #6 embraces notions of performativity, dialogue and interchange.
The column motif was designed by students in Aphra Shemza’s Co-creation workshops and the artist has taken this as inspiration to create this piece.
In shemza.digital #6, the viewer is invited to interact with a column borrowed from Shemza’s City Wall series. Here Aphra Shemza has turned Shemza’s 2D concept which he based on Islamic architecture into something physical again that can be felt and experienced by the viewer. The ultrasonic sensors of shemza.digital #6, measure the visitor’s distance from the work and on approaching the archway the viewer’s presence makes the lights illuminate, enticing the viewer to interact with the piece. The viewers’ physical interactivity turns them into active, connected participants and this not only further develops the work but creates it: the closer they get, the more they see. Shemza.digital #6 embraces notions of performativity, dialogue and interchange.
The column motif was designed by students in Aphra Shemza’s Co-creation workshops and the artist has taken this as inspiration to create this piece.
About the artists:
Aphra Shemza
www.aphrashemza.com | @aphrashemza
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Aphra Shemza is the co-founder of Art in Flux and the co-curator of Art in Flux: Reclaimed exhibition. She is also a UK-based multimedia artist and the granddaughter of Anwar Shemza.
Her work explores Modernism, her Islamic cultural heritage, sustainable practice and creating art for all. As an artist and activist, she finds ambitious ways to fuse methodologies from the past with new innovations in technology to imagine what the role of art could be in the future. Alongside her practice Aphra is the Manager of the Estate of Anwar Jalal Shemza and an expert in his work. In 2016 Shemza wrote a Tate Etc. article which coincided with a Spotlight display of his work at Tate Britain. She is currently cataloguing the Estate archive. |
Stuart Batchelor
www.sfbatchelor.com | @s.f.batchelor_
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Stuart Faromarz Batchelor is a London-based painter and computer artist who combines traditional media with custom software to create still, moving and installation work to explore visual phenomena and the relationship between maths, nature and our perception of meaning.
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