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Suburban Utopia, An Infertile Place (SU4IP)
Lyndon Watkinson


Lyndon Watkinson (1999) is an artist, designer, writer, and musician based in Sheffield, UK. Democratising art and art context through artworks, publications, graphic design, articles, and sound. Creative director and founder of the online arts organisation SU4IP. His work is characterised by a desire for precision, often depicting aesthetics that celebrate and criticise the absurdity of corporatized identity, calling into question the necessity of creating false exteriors when what is not seen is often just as important.

In late 2020, a blog post entitled Suburban Utopia, An Infertile Place formed part of the wider inquiry and development of his practice for his bachelor's degree in fine art. As his work matured, he applied this term as a formalisation of his creative endeavours, later abbreviating it to SU4IP, now used as a digital alias and publishing entity.

Artworks
Publications
Articles
Websites

About

Suburban Utopia, An Infertile Place (SU4IP)
Lyndon Watkinson


Lyndon Watkinson (1999) is an artist, designer, writer, and musician based in Sheffield, UK. Democratising art and art context through artworks, publications, graphic design, articles, and sound. Creative director and founder of the online arts organisation SU4IP. His work is characterised by a desire for precision, often depicting aesthetics that celebrate and criticise the absurdity of corporatized identity, calling into question the necessity of creating false exteriors when what is not seen is often just as important.

In late 2020, a blog post entitled Suburban Utopia, An Infertile Place formed part of the wider inquiry and development of his practice for his bachelor's degree in fine art. As his work matured, he applied this term as a formalisation of his creative endeavours, later abbreviating it to SU4IP, now used as a digital alias and publishing entity.

Artworks
Publications
Articles
Websites

About
00:16,

Digital Collage, 2021

Observing our perceptions of cultures, 00:16 explores our relationships with geographically unique aesthetics, characters, and customs. Emulating the iris, this image interoperates between pencil, paper, and pixels on a screen.



︎    Graph paper is an interface between the chaos of the human mind and the standardisation of the grid. A succinct language. To embody this, I would require the absence of subconscious bias being reflected in its design and purely retaining the abstract. Purely for its composition rather than its meaning or connotations.

Ed Hardy recalls his time working in Japan: "Because to them [the rokabiri], pop American culture was their exotica. The way that the Japanese was to mine." [1] Hans Haacke on his submission to a French monument design competition: "Mounted on the cylinder, in gold, was supposed to be the three words [...]: ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité'. But for this occasion, it was to be in Arabic calligraphy. And of course, I was doubtful whether this proposal would be accepted, and I was proven right." [2]

The general layout of the image is derived from that of the human iris, with the white circle representing the iris itself and the black exterior representing the inside of the eye. The green and black are for digital; the grey and white are for physical. Elements within exist and interoperate between these separate realms in alternating forms.

[1] VICE: YouTube. Ed Hardy: The Godfather of Modern Tattooing | Tattoo Age Episode 10. (33:39). Visited: Sept. 2021. URL: https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=x-Cl-t6iyAM
[2] Mehmet Zeyneloglu: YouTube. Critical Issues in Public Art presents: Hans Haacke. (34:36). Visited: Sept. 2021. URL: https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=E54FJwE5KNY&t=3005s