Showcase: Mikey Cook

Mikey Cooke graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2013 with a BA (Hons) Fine Art: Painting and Printmaking. 

 

"A Synchronicity is the occurrence of two events which are apparently mutually acausal or unlikely to occur together by chance, yet do so in a revelatory manner. Synchromysticism is the world-view that everything in the universe is connected. My current practice concerns the fabrication of a simultaneously fictitious and factual Yorkshire: an alternate reality (or more aptly, realities) of God's Own County where the distinction between fact and flummery becomes increasingly blurred. These microcosms are concocted through the exploration, exploitation and documentation of the weird and unheimlich, or uncanny, within the consensus reality via a synchromystic flter. Although the degree of truth retained is often subject to intense undulation, fact of some sort never ceases to remain a common denominator, whether it be historical, social or scientific. It is these perpetually fluctuating 'truths' which become the basis for fictional narratives, tall tales and absurd characters created through a process of uncovering a plethora of far fetched and often irrational links – a demented Six Degrees of Separation more suited to the serendipitous endeavours of a boondoggling detective or apophenia-ridden conspiracy theorist. 

"A recent trip back to Yorkshire resulted in the discovery of several Biro scrawled newspaper cuttings, their positions undeniably premeditated, their reference to 'Julie' a common denominator and their handwriting identical, both to each other and cuttings discovered around the area since pre-puberty, unsavoury signifers of the transition of commodifcation in correlation to coming of age. I have discovered innumerable synchronicities between these cuttings; pre-teen porn collecting; Castleford's rich Roman heritage; lineage of nomenclature traced back to the Goddess of love and sex, Venus (reappropriated from the Greek's Aphrodite, or Cytherea – an alias now adopted by a porn star); the mythical Siren (in early Christian etymology Siren was a euphemism for prostitute); and linguistic contortion. Collectively these synchronicities culminate in the fabrication of a highly speculative yet eerily plausible universe, a uchronic Castleford enriched in the omnipresent 'Julie Mythos.' This holographic microcosm is then used as a platform from which to synthesise a body of work involving the reappropriation and subsequent deformation of a plethora of relics from an imagined Castleford. Perverting paraphernalia from its Roman past to the work of its most famous son, Henry Moore, up to its present infatuation with pound shops, markets and bargain centres, semi-fictional souvenirs incite unhinged doppelgängers of classicism. Impeccable antiquity is subverted as once elegant objects are transformed and contorted by Poundland cheap and low brow construction: items which were once opulent in their antecedence metamorphose to suit today’s post-Thatcher Castleford. "