Colonise the Cloud: Phalanx
by Gretta Louw
by Gretta Louw
Colonise the Cloud: Phalanx is part of a larger body of work, focused around a series of animated GIFs but extending into prints, graphics, textiles, and video, that has been a central part of the artist’s practice for the last 6 years. The animated loops are created laboriously frame by frame using found imagery in a very slow, low-fi digital process; one that is consciously at odds with the accelerationist narratives of big tech. The series is an attempt to find a new visual language - new metaphors - for the digital; an Earth-bound digital iconography. In earlier works the artist deconstructed and appropriated Cloud marketing imagery to highlight the absurdity of these cynically misleading campaigns. She then started combining these works with jellyfish, evoking thoughts about swarms as networks; how these ancient life forms are flourishing in acidifying oceans; and reports of millions of jellyfish swimming en masse into the plumbing of coastal nuclear power plants and causing shutdowns.
Gretta Louw is a South African-born Australian artist, writer, and curator. Her work has been exhibited widely in public institutions and galleries such as the Wro Media Art Biennale 2021 / Wro Art Centre (PL), Furtherfield Gallery (UK), Kunstmuseum Solothurn (CH), Münchner Stadtmuseum (DE), UNSW Galleries (AUS), LABoral (ESP), and Zuccaire Gallery (USA), amongst others. She has received several awards in Germany and Australia and her work has been covered by press outlets including Hyperallergic, Kunstforum, Motherboard, AQNB Magazine, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and others. She currently lives and works in Germany and Australia.