Before The Linyow Came - Give & Takeover Commission
Molly Erin McCarthy
A little while ago, a long way from here… / A-gynsow, pell alemma…
Following an era of immense development, the planet Terra is being gradually subsumed by a viscous entity known as the Linyow. In a remote sector to the south west of Central, a scavenger sets about their work - collecting data from a mysterious place called Magor, which, for some reason, the Linyow has failed to reach.
Before The Linyow Came presents four Augmented Reality sculptures of landmarks from a speculative fiction world based on the ‘Forgotten Corner of Cornwall’.
‘The Forgotten Corner’ refers to a geographical area of South East Cornwall, so named because its location, away from main travel routes and towns, means it's often bypassed by visitors. Despite it’s ‘forgottenness’, issues of tourism, gentrification and extreme differences in wealth and privilege affecting the region have still found their way here.
Each sculpture is inspired by real sites and objects found in ‘The Forgotten Corner’, reimagined as part of a speculative fiction world that wonders: what might this landscape look like if these issues continue to persist.
Presented as Instagram filters, Before The Linyow Came explores the potential for co-opting online platforms to widen accessibility to digital art, while critiquing their capitalist structures from within.
Molly’s Instagram filters, designed specifically to interact and sit amongst Wab’s work, can also be experienced anywhere in the world via the following links:
Molly Erin McCarthy is a multimedia artist based in Plymouth, UK. Her practice is rooted in creating narratives and ‘worlds’, where the lines of truth, fiction and what is ‘real’ are blurred.
Themes of chaos, power, class and societies' quest for progress thread through her work. Molly’s methodology is akin to scavenging, drawing on sources as wide ranging as archaeology, internet lore and city planning to ask how we form, and are formed by, the physical and philosophical landscapes we reside in.
To launch MIRROR’s Give & Takeover programme strand, MIRROR has commissioned three South West based artists to respond to the 2022 exhibitions programme. Give & Takeover’s can take any form with the one rule that they must not disturb the exhibition they are responding to and intervening in.
The Give & Takeover commission series has been funded by Arts Council England with the support of National Lottery players.
