Advanced Video Attribute Terminal Assembler and Recreator
Candida Powell-Williams work takes it for granted that now a days the word AVATAR is synonymous with the digital world rather than the mythological or religious one that it originated from. In this work she explores the chains of connections and mutability of the word, it’s meanings and mysterious and different realities it creates.
A) The word originates from the Hindu god
B) Avatars in computing are graphical representations of the user or user’s alter ego.
C) In Norman Spinrad's novel Songs from the Stars (1980), the term avatar is used in a description of a computer generated virtual experience.
D) Structured Language Processing or SLP Avatar. This is an artificial online agent e.g. when a website company offers you an online chat with a sales rep.
E) Shape shifters; the ability to change from one form to another. Conspiracy theorists believe that many contemporary figureheads from the Queen of England to Obama, Beyonce, Lady gaga etc are actually alien shape shifters.
F) We also use the term Protean (meaning versatile or mutable) after the Greek god Proteus.
Candida Powell-Williams' sculptures and performative pieces are stutteringly celebratory and imbued with a troubled playfulness… seeking chains of coincidences and patterns of recurrence, , (she) investigates the characters and events which have shaped our cultural history… moments deom the past are folded unto the present as Powell-Williams calls upon mythological, art hstorical and pop-culture references, weaving together threads from disparate eras into one knotty multi-layered narrative… (she) create(s) a visual cacophony, where works seem to restlessly spawn new connections between each other, loop back on themselves and exploit the mutability of objects and their narratives” -Antonia Shaw curator. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2011 and the Slade in 2009 Candida Powell-Williams has had solo exhibitions including Glissando at Bosse and Baum, London (2014), Coade’s Elixir – an occupation (2014) at Hayward Gallery Concrete Café, Sleight at Lewisham Arthouse (2012). Recent group exhibitions include Hot Stones, Wet Areas, Fast Melons (Vienna, 2013); Muster Point (ASC Gallery, London, 2013), Please be Quite (BSR, Rome, 2013); and Tourist Information Point (Supercollider, Blackpool, 2013). She recently presented her live performance Icons at Phillips Auction House as part of a fundraising event, Nov 2014. In 2013 Powell-Williams completed a yearlong residency at the British School in Rome, having been awarded the Sainsbury Scholarship in Painting and Sculpture. Other residencies and awards include; Cite des Artes Paris, the Lewisham Arthouse residency and the Eric & Jean Cass Sculpture Award. Alongside recent exhibitions Candida facilitated DentalFlux at the Southbank Centre. She was recently featured in the German magazine FUKT London. She also designed the set for The Francis Bacon Opera.
