Author Description

Sean Kerr: Pop is an artist's book of concept drawings replete with a gorgeous die-cut tunnel and a new essay by Natasha Conland. The drawings collated for this volume float above projects executed by Kerr from the very late nineties until the present day. As such it operates as a spectral-partial survey catalogue for an exhibition that only exists as a sketch sandwiched between the white hardcovers of this new book. The book itself has the dimensions and object-feel of a children's storybook, and this is no coincidence. As the insightful essay by Conland details, particular forms of simple humour where the fall-person thinks s/he is smarter than s/he is, are the spine of this bubbling, chattering, clicking, whirring and exploding body of work. Kerr's work tends to be let down by the term New Media. Kerr employs technology, yes, but there is so much life breathed into his many schemes, by way of the various characters and situation comedies he has presented us with, that he makes the monster of technological stock-in-trades walk and talk. These drawings - some hand-wrought and some out-putted, along with digital grabs of studies rendered in computerland - have the air of being made by a well-meaning, very sweet computer that just wants to join in, or even help. This cleverly conceived book gently complicates any idea of a simple successful, adult relationship between man and machine.