Sorcha Dallas

Format Wars is a new commission by Glasgow based artist Alex Frost. The work is situated in two locations – the Project Room (the last exhibition in its current location) and outside, on a wall in the Tramway café patio. The starting point for this work is contemporary café culture (an easy-going middle ground between work and leisure – ‘wi-fi with coffee’), as well as the educational or inspirational aims of civic sculpture. The work is also a direct response to Tramway as a cultural centre with a café and a garden. The two works can be seen as a whole, complementing each other whilst simultaneously relating directly to their own sites. There is a tension in the works between the subject – adult sophistication and technological development – and the ‘clunky’ way they have been created. This tension is also reflected, in the outdoor piece, by the sourcing of the image of the flowers from a digital picture of a bouquet bought in a local supermarket (Blu-ray); and in the work in the Project Room, the fact that the shop bought patterned tiles used to make the HDDVD mosaic were sourced and bought by the artist on the internet.