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Charlie Donaldson

Anecdotes

6

April 2023

6

Apr

2023

28

Apr 2023

Gallery 2

Anecdotes

Charlie Donaldson

6

April 2023

6

April

2023

28

April 2023

Gallery 2

Grid-based online image archives facilitate a flourishing cross-pollination of pictures from every facet of history and culture, generating arrangements that could be read as stories. Recently, my research examines European prehistoric painted caves, such as Lascaux and Altamira, decorated between12,000 and 33,000 years ago. The sophisticated, layered paintings at these sites appear incomprehensible to us, their meaning lost to an expanse of deep time. Using disparate references accumulated online by chance encounter, Anecdotes draws parallels between these enigmatic sites and contemporary digital folklore, where complex layers of humour and inscrutability as well as the rapid progression of visual languages counter the notion that the internet is for everyone. By emphasising parts of supposed narrative (location, prop, character, action) drawn together playfully in hand-made toy block frames, the resulting stories provide insight into the legibility and durability of folk-historical and empirical narratives in contemporary culture.

Exhibition documented by Elena Hogan.

Grid-based online image archives facilitate a flourishing cross-pollination of pictures from every facet of history and culture, generating arrangements that could be read as stories. Recently, my research examines European prehistoric painted caves, such as Lascaux and Altamira, decorated between12,000 and 33,000 years ago. The sophisticated, layered paintings at these sites appear incomprehensible to us, their meaning lost to an expanse of deep time. Using disparate references accumulated online by chance encounter, Anecdotes draws parallels between these enigmatic sites and contemporary digital folklore, where complex layers of humour and inscrutability as well as the rapid progression of visual languages counter the notion that the internet is for everyone. By emphasising parts of supposed narrative (location, prop, character, action) drawn together playfully in hand-made toy block frames, the resulting stories provide insight into the legibility and durability of folk-historical and empirical narratives in contemporary culture.

Charlie Donaldson

Charlie Donaldson is an artist based in Meanjin/Brisbane. Donaldsons practice considers how digital image collections influence our understanding of empirical and folk-historical narratives in contemporary culture. They are interested in how the internet can be used as both an organisational tool for image-based research and a means of purposefully muddling the usefulness of the information it contains.