Wunderkammer: the artificial kingdom [group exhibition]

In his essay Dream Machines Edward Allington charts the history of machines that make art. In the article, which includes 2 images of Painting Machine II (New Contemporaries 1999) he states that "Natasha Kidd's work is a continually investigation of the painting machine ………….these machines seem to threaten the meditative silence of the act of painting" (Frieze issue 66, April 2002).
Developed over a period of 5 years, the painting machines of which there are 5, repeatedly dip a canvas into a vat of paint. Operate on a timer, each motor-driven dip produces a new layer of paint on the canvas surface. Over time, the machines have become more sophisticated. Machine V, the last in the series, is constructed from Perspex revealing its inner workings to the audience in an attempt to further demystifying the process. Although machine made, the canvases are never the same. They are a record of their own production and in their ability to be unique works, question notions of authenticity and authorship. In August 05 Allington curated Wunderkammer: the Artificial Kingdom the inaugural exhibition in the new Curtois Gallery within The Collection: Art and Archaeology in Lincolnshire. In this exhibition, that also included artists such as Hannah Collins, Dan Graham, Arman, Marc Quinn, Marcel Duchamp, Painting Machine IV was installed and left running for the 3-month exhibition period. The painting produced by the machine was acquired by the museum for its collection. In the catalogue (ISBN 0-9539238-4-3) for the show Ed Allington notes that the machines are a form of robotic art, questioning the accepted role of the artist and he contextualizes the work in relation to Jean Tinguely's Metamatics and Rebecca Horn's splashing machines.