Tom Cardew is an artist and writer working in film, installation and fiction. His practice explores tacit societal structures of competitive and comparative worth, meditating upon the markers, myths, superstitions and materials that shape them. His work often examines ideas of authenticity and memory within the digital; atmospheres and social scaffolds formed through transactional, value-based exchange, and of digital para-social relations.
Recent works include a multiscreen installation of tired and forlorn, singing office workers, solo at g39 (2019) and Tension Fine Art (2022), an award winning satirical video exploring the contradictions of ‘luxury’ and ‘sustainability’ commissioned by Nowness & Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (2018), a series of photographic images and stop-motion videos from a hitchhiking trip exploring ideas of codified time and a singular truth inherent within image-based documentation, solo at Tension Fine Art (2019), and a collaborative residency on the rural Norwegian Island Stokkøya (2021) culminating in an artistic study involving sound, speech, photogrammetry, stone engraving and pewter castings, reflecting the structures of storytelling in folk tradition specific to the story of Hest Elias (Elias the horseman), a local man whose life rejected the norms of society in favour of a commune with horses.