Tom Watson
Hailing from the UK, my practice encompasses setting up conditions for reconstituting the materials that comprise an object, in order to tease out one other permutation of use, and, I also follow my interest in certain social and economic systems in order to produce interventionalist outcomes. Through appropriation on a micro scale, I wish to expose social norms aligned with a worship of expediency, which I find highly questionable.
Following the award of a Grant For The Arts from Arts Council England in 2007, I undertook a residency of my own design, and exhibited the outcome. I have shown broadly in UK art spaces; Transmission (Glasgow), Bureau, (Manchester), Trade City, (The Manchester International Festival), Hackney Wick(ed) Festival (London), Plan-9 (Bristol), and in 2008 I exhibited as part of the Suite collective in The Cable Factory, (Finland). I have collaborated with Turkish artist and 2009 Venice Biennale representative Ahmet Ogut, together producing a discrete intervention, which is documented in The Centrifuge Art Prize catalogue. Recently in 2011, as part of the group Archipelago, I received the first micro-commission in a new programming series from Cornerhouse art gallery, and set up and undertook an exchange residency between Flux Factory and Islington Mill in Manchester UK.