STATEMENT
McEwen’s practice is concerned with the impact of extractive digital technologies. They employ methods of capture and reproduction including expanded methods of photography, printmaking and casting. McEwen’s practice results in photo-sculptural artworks as solid corporeal statements standing unswerving amongst the fluid cycle of content we consume and generate, rupturing the artifice of the image.
Foregrounding ubiquitous surveillance that occurs through simply navigating contemporary spaces and digital technologies, McEwen uses their body as conduit for investigation. They consider how bodies perform for the algorithmic virtual gaze in an image-based attention economy, and the resulting extraction of individuals as data assets. Documenting the performance of the body considers the impact algorithmically curated content and generated imagery has on user's agency.
In order to unpack these contemporary technologies, McEwen is interested in tracing the history of Information Technology and its relationship with Printmaking and Photography, methodologically excavating power structures embedded in information systems and their impact on users. McEwen links this with contemporary digital technological methods. They also engage with the material and minerals which sustain the often invisible infrastructure that houses the corporately mythologised ‘cloud’ including copper, silica and aluminum.
By transposing digitally captured or manipulated information into sculptural materials, McEwen is posing a visual metaphor for the very physical impact digital images and information has on reality.