Luke is an artist and writer whose work explores the shifting and porous edges of our sensoria. Interposing elements of science, philosophy and the occult, he investigates the frameworks and fictions we construct to make sense of the world.
Luke studied Fine Art at the Bretton Hall Campus of the University of Leeds before completing his MA at the Royal College of Art. His work has been performed, screened and exhibited internationally for over 20 years in institutions and art galleries including Tate Britain (London), the British Film Institute (London), the Barbican (London), MoMI (NY), Institute of Contemporary Art (London), MoMA (Sydney), Cal Arts (LA) Le Salle de Legion d’honneur (Paris) and the ICC tower Open Sky Gallery (Hong Kong).
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Practice
Luke's practice incorporates an eclectic collage approach to film, experimental writing, photography, installation and performance.
His work questions the strategies we deploy in order to explain and sometimes exclude unwanted incursions of alterity. Chance and collage are invoked as methods to construct disrupted narratives that embrace the uncanny, the weird and the eerie and bypass the limitations of empirical systems of knowledge and ownership. By weaving together found material with new narratives, seemingly disparate fragments are reconfigured to challenge the apparent order of things and open spaces for the possibility of imagining alternate readings of time and space.
Accordingly, Luke's work strays across a range of formats, incorporating texts, images, audio-visual works and performance. His practice considers art and aesthetics not just in the abstract and sublime, but in the force and traction of images in the world to invoke an emancipatory politics.
Current and recent projects
Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson: The Order of the Dawn Man
This theory-fiction narrative and series of fictioned collaborative collages/paintings is 'authored' by Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson (creator of Piltdown Man) but realised or 'fictioned' by Pendrell and Pollard. The collaborative collages/paintings imagine the Piltdown Man skull as a hyperstitional portal that activates a supersensible realm 'unthought'. Significantly, the text was written after the paintings were produced, allowing for the materials and process to guide the text into intuitive and unchartered new worlds.
Speculative Tate
Speculative Tate was a ten-month research residency hosted by Tate Britain, constructed for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics and new forms of realism, culminating in three large scale public events. Working collaboratively with James Trafford, the volume ‘Speculative Aesthetics’ (Urbanomic 2014) proposed an examination of the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the planetary media network within which it now exists and considers how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices.
This project was subsequently developed in collaboration with Adrian Shaw at Tate Britain into ‘Speculative Tate’, a ten-month research residency hosted by Tate Britain, constructed for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics and new forms of realism, culminating in three large scale public events.
Publications, exhibitions and other outcomes
Selected Publications
Pendrell, L. 2019. Remote Vision Experiments: A Photo Roman, Angelaki, 24(1)
Pendrell, L.& Trafford, J. 2017. 'Hard Wired Hegemony', Modes of Criticism, Eindhoven, Onomatopee
Pendrell, L. 2015. The Shape of the Void, Design Ecologies 4.1: Tipping Points, Intellect
Mackay, R., Pendrell, L. & Trafford, J. eds., 2014. Speculative aesthetics, Falmouth: Urbanomic
Branagan, B., Pendrell, L & Verhoeven,E. 2011. Submerged Territories: Doggerland, London: Ponsonby Press
Pendrell, L. (2008) 'You can telephone from here: on the methodology and ontology of covert surveillance photography' Fusco,M., The Happy Hypocrite, (4) A Rather Large Weapon, London: Bookworks
Selected Exhibitions, Screenings and Performance
Fractal Egg Karaoke Klub, Project 78 Gallery, Saint Leonards, England, Aug 2019
The Ghost of Fanny Boscawen, Hatchlands Park National Trust, Guildford, 2018
Mr. Dynamite, LSFF, ICA, London, 2018
FUGUE STATE (performance) BRETURN, Kabinet Müz, Brno, Czech Republic, 2017
Submerged Territories, (broadcast) Resonance FM, London, 2017
Submerged Territories, Possible Probable Worlds, LDF, 2017
Fugue States (solo show) Vacant Seasons, The Chopping Block Gallery, London, 2017
Terminal Velocity, Our Machines, DRHA, Brighton, UK, 2016
Superluminal, The Big Screen, Latitudes festival, UK, 2016
Superluminal, Open Sky Gallery, (Installation) ICC tower, Hong Kong, 2016
Bad infinity 2.0 (two-person show with James Trafford) Xero, Kline & Coma, London, 2016
Ignis Fatuus, ISEA, Vancouver, Canada, 2015
Apohenia, (multi channel installation) DISRUPT: Late at Tate, Tate Britain, London, 2015
Ignis Fatuus, (screening) SPECULATE: Late at Tate, Tate Britain, London, 2015
Broken Symmetries (multi channel installation), DISRUPT: Late at Tate, Tate Britain, 2015
Ignis Fatuus, &Now 2015: Blast Radius, California Institute of Arts, LA 2015
antirom, Digital Revolution, The Barbican, London, 2015
Future Thinking, Showcase Gallery, Southampton, 2015
antirom, Dead Drops: Insert Disc, MoMI, New York, 2013
Reverting to Type, Standpoint Gallery, London, 2012
Make an Icon out of Popcorn, Matts Gallery, London 2010
35 Books from London, Salon für Kunstbuch, Vienna, 2009
Blitzkrieg Bop, curated by Claire Price, Man & Eve, London, 2008
Selected Talks
Hard Wired Hegemony, Dutch Arts Institute, Cologne, 2017
Hauntology: In search of Ghosts, RCA, London, 2017
What was once proven can now only be Imagined London Conference for Critical Theory, 2017
Mostly I am Satisfied: The Politics of Boredom Rethinking Interaction, UCA Mayday Rooms, London, 2017
Design & Democracy, RCA, London, 2017
Ignis Fatuus, &Now Blast Radius, California Institute of Arts, Los Angeles, 2015
Haunters & the Haunted, Speculative Tate, Tate Britain, London, 2015
