ELAAA v1.1 & Micheila Petersfield: Personae

Our lives are dominated by images and algorithms, dictating what we see and when on the internet, swaying decisions about what we consume, and pushing us to look and feel certain ways. The creative response to these rapid technological changes is varied. While Jon Smeathers’ experiments with curatorial algorithms, Micheila Petersfield’s glamour paintings of women signals a shift away from digital imaging back to a medium that bares evidence of the artist’s hand.

Embraced in the Loving Arms of an Algorithm – v1.1 (ELAAA v1.1), is a stark, but intellectually rich and timely exhibition that claims to be curated by an algorithm. It’s the creation of Jon Smeathers, a composer, sound installation artist and recipient of this year’s Contemporary Art Tasmania curatorial mentorship. The four participating artists are redesignated as “ghost workers” (described in the exhibition blurb as humans who anonymously perform short-term tasks on automated platforms). In the main space, industrial metal poles lift the four small artworks far beyond eye height. Near the ceiling, Zachary Doney’s Notification Tray, 2024, displays a rolling feed of phone notifications, the screen deliberately oriented away from the entrance, as dictated by the algorithm. Billie Rankin’s grotesque “pet rock” with chicken claws has an explanation “this sculpture is a memory of bread.” Equally absurd is Adelphie He’s jar of mochi powder and water, called mochi bb sugar mummy farted, 2024. The most decorative of the four, Grace Gamage’s print Bread Flower, 2024, is crudely pegged to the top of the metal plinth. While the aesthetic appearance of the exhibition suggests that professional curators need not be too worried about being replaced by artificial intelligence just yet, the adjoining workshop room with its cosy couch, pink walls, water cooler, reading material and documentation, is welcoming and very human.

When you think of algorithms, your thoughts probably go to your social media feed or the burgeoning field of generative AI. Yet, algorithms can be as simple as a manual checklist, and so an algorithm lends itself well to the systematic aspects of curation. For curators today, there’s a real tension between trying to make an exhibition novel and unformulaic, while still adhering to the unwritten rules of gallery or museum curatorship. Given the recent advances in machine learning, Smeathers is not alone in experimenting with curatorial algorithms. Earlier this year, an exhibition in London, The Algorithmic Pedestal, compared algorithmic and human curation, using Instagram’s “black box” algorithm to select artworks for display alongside works selected by a human curator. However, while the London show used existing artworks, the artworks and display decisions in ELAAA v1.1 are the distinct result of a collaboration between human input and Smeathers’ curatorial algorithm, a result that resists classic aesthetic appeal.

There’s an undeniable humour to this exhibition. In the workshop space, a printed worksheet shows how the algorithm assessed the resulting artworks against a rubric of “artistic merit, risk, balance, audience, and alignment to Contemporary Art Tasmania’s core values” – terms that would be familiar to anyone who has ever engaged with an arts funding body or publicly funded organisation. A stale loaf of bread is given a score of sixteen, while Notification Tray is given a measly ten. Evidently, the algorithm doesn’t think much of its own work. Curious, I asked another algorithm ̶ Google’s AI system Gemini  ̶  if it thought ELAAA v1.1 should have scored more highly, only to discover Google’s algorithm resisted all invitations to analyse and assess its peer. As Gemini pointed out, it couldn’t understand “artistic intent and social commentary,” nor could it yet “read” the images I shared with it or consider the exhibition’s aesthetics. It seems the jobs of both curators and art critics are safe for now.

At Despard Gallery, Micheila Petersfield’s latest exhibition, Personae, represents a significant shift in medium and process for the artist, from digital portrait photography to painting. While the medium has changed, her subject interest remains similar, and the end result is still shiny and slick. Like her digital self-portraits, Petersfield’s paintings are based on the artist’s likeness, drawing on the visual language of fashion, advertising, and popular culture. Her portraits depict clichéd female figures, many displaying overt indicators of wealth ̶ one is shrouded in a Hermes scarf, while another in pearl earrings holds prosciutto on a fork, her gaze not quite meeting the viewer’s. In Amber, 2024, the woman’s face fills the canvas, her lips plump and exaggerated in their shine, her stare visible through her amber sunglasses. In Retro Wallpaper, 2024, by contrast, the woman looks away, red lips pouted, eyes obscured by vintage frames. The “retro” patterned background has the effect of flattening the entire image, and the hand that that enters the frame from the right-hand side appears quite ominous, the who and why ambiguous.

While not part of Personae, many of Petersfield’s photographs are displayed in Despard’s foyer and side spaces, such as the mysterious Body Double, 2020, that formed part of her PhD exhibition in 2023, titled Virtual Femininity: A Photographic Exploration of the Idealised Body in Digital Self-Imaging Practices. After interrogating digital self-portraiture to such a level, it’s curious that Petersfield’s first exhibition post-PhD at Despard comprises entirely paintings. In the catalogue, the artist recalls being asked “why paint a photograph?” in her undergraduate painting class, prompting to her to focus on photography. Free of the institution, this return to painting is apparently the artist’s way of trying to resolve this question. However, when surrounded by so many slick, photorealistic portraits, I found myself asking the same question: “why painting?” Is Petersfield’s return to painting about labour, each brushstroke physically representing the time invested in image making, as opposed to the more hidden labour involved in digital imaging and Photoshop? Or perhaps it’s a counter to the proliferation of AI imaging. While that question might not be answered in Personae, I look forward to seeing how she addresses this tension between photography and painting in future exhibitions. After all, it’s been almost 200 years since the invention of photography, and contrary to French artist Paul Delaroche’s then supposed declaration, “from today, painting is dead,” painting seems to constantly revive and reinvent itself in response to the technological developments of the day.

EXHIBITIONS

Embraced in the Loving Arms of an Algorithm – v1.1
12 April–18 May 2024
Contemporary Art Tasmania, Hobart 

Micheila Petersfield: Personae
3 – 27 April 2024
Despard Gallery, Hobart