Published on behalf of Travelling Gallery.
The exhibition brings together work by five artists, MV Brown, Nina Davies, Gavin Gayagoy, Hardeep Pandhal and Gregor Wright, who all explore our relationship with technology and the internet and how, as a medium or material, its slippery nature creates spaces of inauthenticity where curated versions of ourselves blur and distort reality, and algorithms and applications construct fictional narratives or environments to play with or react against.
Spanning performance, moving image, sculpture and drawing each artist creates a user experience that highlights the friction existing between our physical body and its digital counterpart, with authorship and representation disrupted or rendered through computer generation.
Rooted in performance, MV Brown’s practice uses the human body and new technologies to explore the tensions that exist for the body within a digital realm.
Using avatars, prototypes, and ‘false-self’ hoods, MV extends and replicates their body to question how technological advances - often framed as enhancing cognitive and bodily capacities - mediate emotion, interaction, and the construction of identity as beings-in-the-world both online and ‘IRL’ (In Real Life).
Nina Davies’ artistic practice is heavily influenced by her former training and career as a professional dancer. Her work looks at how dance is disseminated, circulated, made, and consumed within popular culture with a particular focus on social media, and the dances derived from trends and films made for present-day digital platforms. Much like MV her work touches upon how bodies are evolving in a world dominated by synthetic media.
Multi-disciplinary artist and designer Gavin Gayagoy uses game design elements to explore how digital environments influence perception, truth, and identity as well as highlight the compulsive consumption of digital content and its impact on us. Visitors are invited to interact with his work in the exhibition and explore a range of both familiar looking and futuristic landscapes. Through these fragmented 3D environments and limited game mechanics, Gavin questions the authenticity of our digital lives and the contradictory nature that being online can bring.
Hardeep Pandhal has also used the visual aesthetics of gaming in his work as a means to comment on cultural production, capitalism and racial stereotypes as perpetuated through everyday popular culture and categorization. Whilst conservative opinions of gaming often focus on its contribution to societal ills, here the bleed between games and reality could be seen to provide a space where varying forms of alienation can be addressed and co-opted, creating a form of empowerment and a means to comment on societal inequalities in a transformative way.
Also included in the exhibition are a number of works by Gregor Wright. Predominantly a painter, Gregor has created a body of work that looks at current modes of image consumption as mediated by algorithms and advancing technology. Presented together are a selection of Gregor’s recent drawings made using graphite pencil, crayon, acrylic and oil and one of his digital ‘screen-based paintings.’ With the rise of AI-generated artwork Gregor highlights the tensions that lie between traditional painting and the virtual digital representations that increasingly dominate our lives.
Launching in Edinburgh at the Collective Gallery, Calton Hill on Friday 20 March from 10.30am to 4.30pm, the exhibition will tour to arts venues, community centres, high streets and schools across Scotland including in East Lothian, Edinburgh, Angus, Moray, the Cairngorms, Skye, Renfrewshire & Falkirk.
Louise Briggs, Curator, Travelling Gallery said:
It has been interesting to think about our ever-increasing relationship with technology through the ideas and artworks of the five artists involved in the show. The exhibition is not meant as a criticism of technology but takes a closer look at its slippery nature where reality can be blurred and authenticity distorted. A number of the artists in the exhibition play with these ideas, whilst others push against them – but all in some way are using technology as a material or medium.
The Travelling Gallery team look forward to introducing the artwork and ideas to audiences across Scotland as part of our Spring Tour and seeing how opinions and thoughts may differ geographically, generationally, and culturally. Everyone usually has an opinion on technology and its place in the world today, we look forward to some healthy discussions around it inspired by the work of this exciting group of artists.
Culture and Communities Convener Margaret Graham said:
Featuring work by five talented artists, this exhibition offers an insightful look into our relationship with technology and the internet.
The Travelling Gallery plays such an important role in ensuring that high-quality contemporary art is not limited to traditional venues. By bringing exhibitions into communities across the city, it helps widen access and encourage new audiences.
I’m proud to support an initiative that broadens access to culture in such a practical and meaningful way, and I hope people will take the chance to step inside and experience the exhibition for themselves.
The exhibition will run from Monday 23 March – Friday 19 June 2026. More information about confirmed tour dates and venues can be found here.