Tim Tate

Blending a traditional craft with new media technology gives me the framework in which I fit my artistic narrative. In my work I explore moving images and endless mirrors to achieve my interest in contemporary work with the aesthetic of Victorian techno-fetishism, which emerged from my fascination with Jules Verne as a boy. Artwork and video I believe will be societies relics of the future. I like to reference many possible histories, and will do so with video or mirrors, to show our common artistic ancestry and illustrate alternate paths. Perhaps centuries from now my work will have the same presence as abandoned archaic machines from the turn of the last century, as people marvel over what could have possibly been its intent.

My work hovers between subjects of scientific curiosity, Contemporary video imagery, relics, rituals and dreams. My interests lie in finding the relics of the future while honoring the past. To me, these works are transparent reliquaries of sorts in which bits of saints’ bones or hair — relics — are displayed, with simultaneous intimacy and distance. . In many cultures and religions, relics are believed to have healing powers. My relics can be temporal; sounds and moving images formally enshrined, encapsulating experiences like cultural specimens. And perhaps, to the contemporary soul, they are no less reliquaries than those containing the bones of a saint.

With technology rapidly changing the way we perceive art, the current day contemporary landscape closely mirrors Victorian times in the arts. We marvel at and invent bridges between past and present in an effort to define our time and make sense of this highly transitory moment in artistic history.