At the Watch House 18 April - 7 June 2024 :
Before the mechanisms of our everyday devices retreated to the atomic level, hidden from view in smooth glassy microliths, engineering was macroscopic. Big moving parts, switches, dials and gauges, form following function. They were the results of mathematics and design by canny engineers and implemented by craftspeople.
As the products of human artifice, ontologically, they are works of art. However, the aesthetic aspects of steam engines, bridges, valve computers and other examples of early industry, have been mostly under-appreciated. Now that they are divorced from their original purposes this photographic study seeks to garner some admiration for the forms and art that went into them.
