Biography
Trystan Williams is a London based artist.
His practice involves using snippets of conversation, excerpts from threads, isolated sentences and thoughts that people have posted online and laser engraving them onto pieces of found stone or ephemera. The text is generally taken from small online communities where posts either aren't archived or aren't viewable without registering to the site. This means the writing is in theory unsearchable and "lost" to all intents and purposes.
He is interested in the ways in which people communicate online, the freedom from collective judgement that psuedo or full anonymity can provide and how it can allow for a fuller expression of what it is to be a human being at this particular time and in this particular culture. The sorts of things people post online are often things they wouldn't express to their closest friend or therapist. They range from the deeply personal and tragic to hilarious absurdity and everything in-between.
The process of taking these often transitory and ephemeral expressions of human thought and emotion and turning them into relatively permanent physical objects is part of a wider investigation into online discourse that the artist is engaged in. A purposeful contrasting of the fast paced nature of the internet and it's never ending torrent of information with one of our oldest forms of recording, preserving and transmitting our culture and knowledge, the carving of word onto stone. The work is a deliberate creation of contemporary ostraca, or ‘artefacts of the now’.
Curriculum Vitae
Education:
MA Fine Art Digital with Distinction, Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, 2014 - 2016
BA Fine Art Painting, Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, 2003 - 2006
GNVQ/BTEC Art & Design, Richmond Upon Thames College, 2000 - 2002
Prizes/Competitions:
Aspen Online Art Prize, Shortlisted, 2016
National Open Art Competition, Shortlisted, Work shown as part of the National Open Art Winter Exhibition at The Royal College of Art, 2015
The Lumen Prize for Digital Art, Shortlisted, Work shown as part of global tour including Cardiff, New York, Hong Kong and London, 2013 - 2014
The ArtLacuna Prize, Shortlisted, Work shown as part of prize exhibition at the ArtLacuna space, 2013
Exhibitions (Group):
Family Reunion, Pi Artworks London, September 2017
The Choice of a New Generation (isthisit? issue 2 launch), The Muse at 269, August 2017
Sweet Art’s Game Face exhibition, Tanner Street Gallery, July 2017
Ugly Duck at OFF QUAY, Reclaim Space, January-February 2017
MA Fine Art Digital, final show, Camberwell College of Arts, July 2016
Made in Arts London, Intersection exhibition, Hoxton Arches, April-May 2016
Sweet Art’s Hand Maid exhibition, Hoxton Arches, March 2016
Ma Fine Art Digital, 1st year interim show, Camberwell College of Arts, July 2015
Digital Meze, Self organised group show with fellow MA students, Gitoon Gallery, April 2015
The Big Noise Festival, Bussey Building, June 2014
Guerilla Zoo, Modern Panic V exhibition, Apiary Studios, November 2014
Guerilla Zoo, Modern Panic IV exhibition, Apiary Studios, November 2013
The Big Noise Festival, Bussey Building, June 2013
Exhibitions/Shows (Solo):
FCA Lobby, Work on display in the lobby of the Financial Conduct Authority, June - November 2014
The L Gallery, Wieden + Kennedy Building, June 2013
Residencies:
isthisit? online residency, www.isthisitisthisit.com/residency, 1st-25th October 2017
Patatas Guerra - 5 day residency around Cox 18 space in Milan, April 2017
Teaching:
Visiting Lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts, July 2017
Third Part Agreement Workshop, organised with phishermans.net collective for the MA
Fine Art Digital course at Camberwell College of Arts, February 2017
Artist talk and day spent shadowing at Camberwell College of Arts Foundation, November 2015