Cuckoo Intelligence
The Influence of Furniture on Love Wysing Arts Centre
2014
Left: Cuckoo Intelligence; Secret Research Deposits, 2014
Wood and Archival Inkjet Print, Pine Cones and concealed collection of early edition books authored by Maxwell Knight. Hung in stairwell of residency at Wysing.
Right: The Cuckoos Shell. Installed on the residency block wall at Wysing.
Radome Panel - materials classified.
A work in two parts. A secret library hidden inside a wall sculpture that resembles a cuckoo clock for the Wysing exhibition. A fragment of a Radome panel used to cover satellite dishes used by Intelligence gathering sites such as Five Eye Network.
To celebrate the anniversary of Wysing Contemporary Arts in Cambridgeshire, I was asked to make a piece of work for the home in which I was formerly an artist in residence, in 1999.
Whilst presenting work on covert cultures, undertaken with Office of Experiments alongside Trevor Paglen in the Cambidge University (CRASSH conference on Covert Cultures in 2011), I was introduced to the shadowy work of Maxwell Knight in a presentation by the author of H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald.
Maxwell Knight, who became a naturalist for the BBC after his spy days, was obsessed by the cuckoo, and other species. From his studies of natural history he applied knowledge to spycraft. He was also a character whose moral, political and sexual ambiguities made him an appropriate figure for the context of this exhibition.
The first smalller sculpture contains a series of slected original edition books of Maxwell Knight, and include: A Cuckoo called Goo, that focuses on Knights attempts to tame a cuckoo, and Fighting Birds, a book about foreign or invasive species in UK territories - focussing on the cuckoo also.
Outside, part of a broken shell of a radome, first exhibited in Dark Places by Steve Rowell, hangs on the wall of the new residency block at Wysing. This is a single polygon, a piece of the radome or Golf Balls, used to cover a satellite dish, creating the familiar shape we can observe in the UK landscape.
The radome shell was also used to make a work called the Hypersensor.
Cuckoo Intelligence currently resides in the Wysing Collection.
The Influence of Furniture on Love with An Endless Supply, Ruth Beale, Juliette Blightman, Ben Brierley, Céline Condorelli, Jess Flood-Paddock, Luca Frei, Gil Leung, Seb Patane, Florian Roithmayr, Phil Root, Laure Prouvost, Cally Spooner, The Grantchester Pottery, Philomene Pirecki , Elizabeth Price, Mark Aerial Waller, Neal White and Lisa Wilkens.
![]()
Wood and Archival Inkjet Print, Pine Cones and concealed collection of early edition books authored by Maxwell Knight. Hung in stairwell of residency at Wysing.
Right: The Cuckoos Shell. Installed on the residency block wall at Wysing.
Radome Panel - materials classified.
A work in two parts. A secret library hidden inside a wall sculpture that resembles a cuckoo clock for the Wysing exhibition. A fragment of a Radome panel used to cover satellite dishes used by Intelligence gathering sites such as Five Eye Network.
To celebrate the anniversary of Wysing Contemporary Arts in Cambridgeshire, I was asked to make a piece of work for the home in which I was formerly an artist in residence, in 1999.
Whilst presenting work on covert cultures, undertaken with Office of Experiments alongside Trevor Paglen in the Cambidge University (CRASSH conference on Covert Cultures in 2011), I was introduced to the shadowy work of Maxwell Knight in a presentation by the author of H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald.
Maxwell Knight, who became a naturalist for the BBC after his spy days, was obsessed by the cuckoo, and other species. From his studies of natural history he applied knowledge to spycraft. He was also a character whose moral, political and sexual ambiguities made him an appropriate figure for the context of this exhibition.
The first smalller sculpture contains a series of slected original edition books of Maxwell Knight, and include: A Cuckoo called Goo, that focuses on Knights attempts to tame a cuckoo, and Fighting Birds, a book about foreign or invasive species in UK territories - focussing on the cuckoo also.
Outside, part of a broken shell of a radome, first exhibited in Dark Places by Steve Rowell, hangs on the wall of the new residency block at Wysing. This is a single polygon, a piece of the radome or Golf Balls, used to cover a satellite dish, creating the familiar shape we can observe in the UK landscape.
The radome shell was also used to make a work called the Hypersensor.
Cuckoo Intelligence currently resides in the Wysing Collection.
The Influence of Furniture on Love with An Endless Supply, Ruth Beale, Juliette Blightman, Ben Brierley, Céline Condorelli, Jess Flood-Paddock, Luca Frei, Gil Leung, Seb Patane, Florian Roithmayr, Phil Root, Laure Prouvost, Cally Spooner, The Grantchester Pottery, Philomene Pirecki , Elizabeth Price, Mark Aerial Waller, Neal White and Lisa Wilkens.