SCANITAS 

StudioKIND, Barnstaple | 1 February - 1 March 2025.  

 

For his solo show, SCANITAS, at Studio KIND, Tom Milnes displays a collection of 3D sculptural and 2D printed works exploring the thematics of glitched still-life images - a contemporary take on the ‘vanitas’ popular in 17th century Flemish painting. 

 

 

 

Vanitas paintings focused on the symbolic impact of ‘vanity’ - in this context, referring to futility and pointlessness of material wealth. The objects depicted in vanitas often represent transient riches and ephemerality of life. Exotic fruits in decaying states, precious metal and glass craftware, beautiful dying flowers, and skulls. Objects depicted all represent the temporal existence of humanity. The Flemish vanitas works still hold high cultural significance, as they deal with the duality of human transience but also provide methods for revealing technological fragility and pointlessness too. 

 

 

 

In SCANITAS, objects are also ephemeral or transitory in their relation to the image making technology as it struggles to understand them. They are objects that confuse the 3D scanning technology producing glitches, in doing so warping and stretching the sculptures and images. Many of these objects present in original vanitas’ still lives confuse the photogrammetric technology including anything transparent, reflective, complex, repetitive, patterned or bland. This provides an opportunity to create a contemporary vanitas that exposes the fragility and temporality of both humanity and technology. 

 

 

 

The 3D works are presented as paper sculptures using techniques known as Pepakura, a hobbyist form of paper craft which takes 3D model and creates printable, flat nets of the object that can be cut, folded and stuck together to form 3D paper sculptures. The printed 2 works use glitched 3D model images and 3D scan textures to create layered collage works.