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.
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Digital Collage, 2022
01:15 incorporates multiple elements of lived experience together to expose the imperfections and overlooked realities of art practice. Leveraging details from the workplace, recreational music production, and the grid, this artwork conveys ideas surrounding holding our creations that we deem not up to standards. A metric defined by self-imposed criteria for what good art should look like.
If artists held themselves accountable to perfect structures and formulae, galleries would have empty walls. Human nature doesn’t allow for complete perfection, despite our best efforts.
︎ The grid can be used to quantify abstract art forms. Altering the act from playing a tangible instrument, to simply plotting points along a virtual graph. Variations of sounds and instruments can be layered and played in tandem.
When you press the play button, the green slider moves to the right at the user-defined speed. Like notes in a music box, the notes react to the green slider as it transitions laterally.
Digital tools allow creators to incorporate the grid into their practice. Raw ideas can be quantified, manipulated, and modified, depending on how closely they resemble the creators’ intentions. Providing significant advantages over analogue techniques, such as painting or drawing.
01:15 unapologetically emulates the use of digital tools in the creation of art. The work displays a visualisation of a .WAV sample in an audio editor. This organic and rugged form defies the rigid structure beneath.
‘Q.C. Hold" is a direct reference to something that is destined to be unfinished, imperfect, or unexposed. Standing for ‘Quality Control[,] Hold’, this element was originally derived from an object found in the wrong place. Items adorned with this overlaying band are intended to be kept at the place of manufacture for quality control.
By adding a similar banner to 01:15, the hidden elements of art practice are brought to the forefront. During the decision-making process, it is sometimes clear that an enacted idea does not meet the standards that are expected. It will be reworked or shelved until further notice.
This piece intends to expose the often-overlooked intricacies of creative endeavours, drawing on elements of music-making and occupational experience to achieve this goal. Despite our best efforts, human nature continues to defy the rigidity of grid-based techniques. If we held everything we create accountable for its conformity to perfect structures, there would be no art.