KA Bird is a queer, visual artist based in Newcastle, UK. Using digital media to inform her painting and print making, Bird’s practice investigates the human in technology and the technological in the human within the all-out integration of internet and world. Her work confronts the implications of mass surveillance, by exploring the digital body, personal identity, and the dangerous allure of visibility.
Distinct to our new era of surveillance capitalism is the emergence of a machine perception – a pervasive and vigilant network of massive computational power, machine learning, interconnected devices, algorithms, trackers, and sensors. Integrated into public spaces and embedded into the home.
This complex apparatus seeks out and reaches every intimate detail, including the contours of your face, and the cadence of your voice. Motivated and justified by the logic of capitalism, the surveillance network captures human behaviour and inner experience, and transforms this information into commodities and services.
Our attitudes, suspicions and desires are leveraged to influence our choices. We’re nudged, pushed, and prompted towards predetermined, profit-maximising outcomes.
Her recent works use AI-generated imagery, requesting these systems to fabricate “real” photographs. These seemingly candid, unscripted snapshots evoke private, intimate moments, imbued with the unsettling recognition that their creation draws on the vast archives of personal photos uploaded to the internet and exploited by tech corporations. In these works, Bird confronts the uneasy relationship between authenticity, consent, and the commodification of human experience.
Her work reveals the pervasive gaze of machines while asserting the human capacity to resist, reclaim, and redefine the conditions imposed by the surveillance apparatus.
Selected Exhibitions and Publications:
I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream, Concrete Gallery, Newcastle, 2024
Total Recall: Memory and Imagination, Mercer Gallery, Harrogate, 2023
Artist in Residence Editorial AW22, End Magazine, 2022
Overlay, Owl, Harrogate, 2022
Curating the Digital, On Curating Issue 45, Contributor, 2020Vacuum Born (Solo Show), The NewBridge Project, Gateshead, 2019
YO1UNG, Ohkaygal, York, 2019
Collective Studio Work-in-Progress Show, Carliol House, Newcastle, 2019
Monitor, AIR Gallery, Manchester, 2018
MIMA School of Art Fine Art Degree Show, Middlesbrough, 2018
Interview with Art Reveal Magazine, Issue 38, 2018
Sundlaug, Centrespace Gallery, Bristol, 2018
Artist in Residence at Joya: arte + ecologia, Velez Blanco, Spain, 2018
Fragments, Testt Space, Durham, 2018
Beige Apocalypse, The Auxiliary, Stockton, 2018
Spiritual Vandalism (performance) with OMSK Social Club, MIMA, Middlesbrough, 2017
Lost Boys, The House of Blah Blah, Middlesbrough, 2017
Middlesbrough Art Weekender, Middlesbrough, 2017
Saturday Night TV Party, Kuhle Wampe, Nottingham, 2017
100 Years of Oui, Cowdinsky x Kimberly Clark, London, 2017
Reverie (performance) with Arca x Jesse Kanda, East London Film Studios, London, 2016
Press Links:
NARC Magazine – https://narcmagazine.com/six-
END magazine AW22 – https://www.endclothing.com/
Interview with Helen Hester & Paul Stewart for On Curating Magazine – https://www.on-curating.org/
Interview with Art Reveal Magazine – https://issuu.com/