David Beattie’s Tokens: new artwork commissioned for TULCA, at the Hall of the Red Earl

David Beattie’s Tokens is a new artwork commissioned for
TULCA, produced from redundant car parts and exploring the
value of waste material in a carbon-based society. A series
of small spherical sculptures are the result of Beattie’s
smelting and extraction of precious metals from catalytic
converters in automobiles. Tokens also gently refers to the
site of its exhibition, at the archaeological remains of The
Hall of the Red Earl in Galway. It was discovered during
excavations in the 1990s that the medieval structure was
reused as a furnace for iron smelting in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.

Beattie notes: ‘Promoted as an efficient way of reducing air
pollutants in vehicles, catalytic converters contain precious
metals that are resold to extract the value of these metals.
Having been heavily processed initially to manufacture the
original catalytic converter, the “scrap” car part is then later
put through another round of extractive processes to obtain
miniscule amounts of rare metals.’ Criminal gangs are
often reported stealing catalytic converters before setting
up makeshift smelting operations to distil their bounty.
Corporate industry even attempted to claim responsible
action around the topic. In 2014, Reuters released a story
with the headline ‘£100,000 each year from dust swept off
streets. It reported that every day, catalytic converters in
cars spit out minute particles of platinum and palladium
that end up in road sweepings gathered by waste recyclers,
like industrial conglomerate Veolia. They claimed to have
started filtering out these precious metals from the 40,000
tonnes of dust it treats per year. ‘We have a surface mine
on our city streets, Estelle Brachlianoff, head of Veolia UK
and Ireland, told reporters. The story was later debunked
as a greenwashing exercise. Beattie reflects that, ‘Ina
constant state of becoming something else, these minerals
highlight the commodification of natural resources, and the
environmental impact of mineral extraction.

More artworks on display by Beattie include Shifting
Forms, an exploration of the use of mimicry in the ongoing
development and pursuit of artificial intelligence, seen
with an ultraviolet fly zapper, robotic vacuum cleaner, and
collection of carnivorous plants together in a domestic
mise-en-scéne of Beattie’s making. Erratic invites the viewer
to ‘activate’ a printed photograph of a rock using augmented
reality and a smartphone. Another variation on this theme,
Remnants, examines mythology, folklore and oral history in
the age of digital reproduction and algorithmic narratives.
Made during an artist residency at Askeaton Contemporary
Arts, Beattie conducted extensive fieldwork around sites of
ancient ritual at nearby Grange stone circle. In navigating
the resulting 3D digital scan, an accompanying story about
the site generated by Al continually interrupts, resets and
changes, seemingly unable to grasp the extent and richness
of the world we live in.

Tulca website: https://www.tulca.ie/