- Thomas Jackson New Yorker
THE NEW YORKER
The Animal Restlessness in Artificial Objects
by Max Campbell, November 18, 2016
The flocks in Jackson’s pictures are so cheeky and vibrant, so artificial and yet so full of apparent animal instinct…When the artist Thomas Jackson began working on “Emergent Behavior,” in 2011, he started with found objects. He collected fallen leaves in the Catskills and picked junk off the street in New York, then moved on to purchasing hundreds of cups and cheese balls, construction fences, glow necklaces, hula hoops, and balloons. He assembles these objects on outdoor frameworks, then photographs the installations. The resulting pictures show inanimate objects caught up in restless movement: some circle, some gather, some dip.
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- Thomas Jackson Beautiful Decay
BEAUTIFUL/DECAYCups, Magazines and Tutus are Swirling Around In Thomas Jackson’s Dreamlike Photographs
by Tamara Akcay, July 8, 2015
What the artist has created is a hazy fantasy that we wish could appear in real life.There is no real connections between the center pieces of Thomas Jackson’s pictures and the landscapes in the background. We are seeing tutus, magazines, cups and streamers floating candidly in a scenery of virgin mountains, forests and beaches. The artist is offering a dreamlike visual of what can be perceived as the last moments on earth of these peculiar items.
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- Thomas Jackson Photo+Eye Blog
PHOTO+EYE Thomas Jackson’s Emergent Behavior
by Anne Kelly, May 27, 2015
My original idea for the series was not swarms at all, but to build and photograph sculptures made from stuff I found lying on the ground in both urban and natural locations. It was about reconstituting detritus into something magical and extraordinary.Inspired by Thomas Jackson’s images, I now have a reoccurring daydream where post-its and a few other office supplies take flight from my desk, swarming in a powerful and rhythmic performance. In this series man made objects assemble in powerful masses, taking on a life of their own as they co-exist with nature. To make these images, Jackson first imagines the composition and then constructs large suspended kinetic sculptures from colorful everyday objects, which are photographed, finally resulting in a still image.
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