Peter Leigh
Attention !
20.01.21 – 06.02.21

This body of work explores the use of internet search metrics as the basis for making non-objective paintings. Measurements of internet searches for news events over a duration of time are translated into visual representations, illustrating the fluctuation of our attention spans as we search for meaning and understanding within the information overload of our hyper mediated age.

The paintings are generated from fragments of this visualised data, with each painting constructed according to an algorithm that determines the location, orientation, size and colour for each fragment on the canvas.

In turn, these constraints provide the freedom to explore a variety of dualities in non-objective painting: rigid structure and improvisation; flatness and depth; the mechanical and the handmade; movement and stillness; durations of time; seriality and variation.

This exhibition alludes to notions of tension, paradox and contradiction, both within the paintings themselves, as well as more broadly in our digital culture. It not only raises questions about the fragmentation and commodification of our attention, but also asks the viewer to slow down and consider the way we consume digital information through different spaces and times.