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Gus Cummins

Ictal

Corridor A wide print, like a strip of film. The upper section is a series of brightly coloured images, accompanied across the bottom by a strip of black, containing a thin white line - an EEG wave. The series of images begins with a red narrow corridor, and frame by frame it distorts and changes colour, becoming a jewel like turquoise colour. In the first frame there is a round window in a door at the end of the corridor, this transforms into a cross like symbol by the final image. The wave at the bottom of the print is an EEG reading showing activity in the artist’s brain, mounting in intensity as the image distorts

Gus Cummins   18 September - 31 October 2009

Gus Cummins makes art that is informed by his epilepsy.

He developed epilepsy at the beginning of the ‘90s, around the same time as he began studying at Art College. It wasn’t until 2007 that he began directly creating work about the condition. He was being assessed for brain surgery, and was often surrounded by brain scans, electrodes and medical data. He utilized this data to create his art.

Circuit A square print with a white background. In the lower left hand corner is a crimson brain scan. Rising from the brain is a black linear circuit diagram, leading to the top of the print. Crossing the print horizontally are two black linear EEG waves. Joining them is a linear black outline of a circle. Text in the print reads: ‘still grinning, knee still swaying, hands behind head, making small laughing sounds, raise eyebrows, still grinning broadly, toes fidgeting. Says he is alright but cannot orientate himself, or tell what his name is, this inability to place himself or his surroundings persists

In 2007 he won the DaDaFest Visual Arts Award in Liverpool, and in 2008 produced the installation ‘Invaders’ with the Exeter Phoenix Digital Art Bursary. In the summer of 2009 the International league Against Epilepsy flew him to Budapest to collect the Centenary Film Award for ‘Ictal’, extracted from his DaDaFest installation.

Currently Cummins is trying to explore other aspects of epilepsy and (un)consciousness. He is striving to show how the world appears to him as he enters a seizure, or to recount fragments of memory from an unconscious phase. The problem of describing these blurred experiences cannot be solved with medical data alone.

Flats. Like the image Corridor, this strip shaped print is divided into a series of images and a white EEG wave on a black strip at the bottom. The images show a block of slats, with some trees in the foreground. The colours are distorted, the flats and trees are white, and the sky is a mixture of deep blue and rich earthy hues. As this image proceeds the flats grow and occupy more of the frame, while blurring. The EEG wave becomes more active as it moves across the print, showing a seizure beginning.

Cummins is acknowledges the support and funding  received from the Arts Council England, DaDa and PVA MediaLab.