Artist Statement

Smoking Bolts features a cluster of machines that will take up occupation in the Artspace Gallery. Successively marking out different compositions and notations, they paint live in the space through an operational system run remotely by the artist in Auckland. The title refers to a clandestine operation in which ‘a special entry team breaks into an enemy installation and steals a high-security device, like a code machine, leaving nothing but the smoking bolts.’

• Since 2007 Simon Ingram has developed a way of working to build on and collaborate with abstract problems inherent to both painting history and a range of attempts that have historically plotted living systems and electromagnetic energy. Ingram is a Senior Lecturer at Elam School of Fine Art in Auckland. Ingram’s recent exhibition history includes projects at MoMA and Pulse NY, both New York; Frankfurter Kunstverein; Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz; The Great Poor Farm Experiment, Waupaca; The Suburban, Chicago; CCNOA, Brussels; Auckland Art Gallery; and The Adam Art Gallery, Wellington. Simon Ingram’s project and residency is supported by Creative New Zealand.