What drew you to each other’s practice?
NY: Oscar and I first worked together on a project with Compiler for an offline router-based group exhibition OFFGRID as part of The Wrong – New Digital Art Biennale (2019). Some really interesting results came of this, for one using photogrammetry techniques, translating my sculptures into a material I wasn’t familiar with – one of coding and developed a platform to share that across the world. Oscar possesses an ability to foster a perspective not otherwise seen and I look forward to what we can do together with the 1:1 FUND with his mind bending digital technical talents.
OC: Previous collaborations with Natascha have always been deeply rewarding because their grounded fine art practice, including a flexible visual / material vocabulary around bodies, objects and self, has a unique potentiality invaluable to the alternative modes of presentation we have experimented with. Our conversations and joint activities never end where we expect but always lead to otherwise elusive artistic outcomes, which is why I can’t wait to see what our 1:1 FUND leads to.
Why did you choose the idea you will be working on?
We are choosing to work in this way in response to the shifting function of traditional art spaces as locations for exhibiting works, in part due to conditions arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. Galleries are changing the ways that they exhibit, and increasingly need to look outward, both through online output and by using outdoor spaces and facades as part of mixed reality experiences, in order to reach audiences. We see this project as an opportunity for critical experimentation around this trend. We hope to encourage individuals to consider the potential of themselves, their bodies and social settings as contexts for sharing art objects and experiences, and enabling discourse around them.
Oscar Cass-Darweish is a digital practitioner with skills in web/graphic design, video, sound and creative coding. Practice in these areas extends to artistic inquiry concerned with the struggle for autonomy at the limits of digital modes of representation. Recently he has exhibited an installation called Time of Flight, at Virtual Worlds Now, Kiblix 2021/22. A group exhibition in Maribor, Slovenia (as part of the collective Compiler).
Natascha Young is a sculptor driven to unpack notions of gender and sexuality, labour and re/production. She has an interdisciplinary practice that currently uses modular aerated concrete block carvings as a means to continue her research project into the Neolithic Venus archetype. She is currently showing as part of the Southwark Park Galleries Open with ‘YES, VENUS’ and recently exhibited with Zona Mista Gallery for Compiler: A Dance of Agency (in times of flight).
