Andrew Welsby

Andrew Welsby is a visual artist based in Scotland, currently working with video, performance, photography and machine made art.

Andrew is interested in the construction of identities within local, national and global communities, using a theoretical framework drawn from Cybernetics and Postcolonial theories. Specifically he focuses on the construction of asymmetrical identity relationships where hegemony and myth are the constructing orders.

System Assembly was built in response to questions of authorship in Systems Art, and System Aesthetics. Specifically Andrew drew upon the essay by Francis Halsall: Systems Aesthetics and the System as Medium, which examines the ways in which a system can be conceived as an artistic medium.

Andrew’s work is also influenced by Rosaland Krauss’s theory of Dematerialisation, which she called the Post Medium Condition. Krauss advocated a definition of medium as the “technical support” for the work of art. Krauss accepted the redundancy of the modernist medium, like oil on canvas and welcomed the ambiguity and lack of medium specificity for new media art works.

As a consequence, these essays reminded Andrew to be less concerned with surface, material and medium in his practice, and instead like the minimalists and conceptual artists, concentrate more on process, aesthetic ‘rule’ making and system.