Exploring ideas of home through language, culture and vernacular architecture, Erin Dickson’s practice deliberately softens provocative subject matters including British class systems, AI bias, intimacy, and isolation.
After being awarded a FACT Together digital residency in 2021, Erin produced Harton Moor (2022), an animated guided tour of a 1970s council estate in South Shields. The estate is presented as an idealised architectural model set against the personal narrative of a child resident, Jessica. The 1:1 representation of the streets and houses of Harton Moor is rendered in uncanny detail within a colourless, translucent world without the marks of human interaction.
A pristine virtual flyover of the site is interrupted by the messy realities described by Jessica, revealing the complex relationships on her street. Offering elements of truth and fiction, Harton Moor exposes the friction between the perspectives of the imagined architect and actual resident, where reality sits somewhere in between.
For this presentation, Erin has produced lifesize 3D printed sculptures of Jessica and her neighbour and fellow Harton Moor resident, Dave, who sit within the space.
These new works by Erin are presented in FACT’s new gallery space designed by Chila Kumari Singh Burman.