Artemis Gallery

To live in the digital era, in this seemingly weightless world, is to linger among the physical and social markers of our shared reality, virtually highlighted through its lights, clouds and bits. Starting from the premise that we are more than a small segment of a larger construction process, in the natural world as in the digital, Above&Below puts nature and computation design at the forefront of their digital creations, resulting in a library of generative forms controlled not by humans, but by code and the ecosystem. Their work combines speculative storytelling, extended reality and digital art, in order to draw unseen connections between humans, machines and the environment. The duo is specialised in the field of sustainable futures, in which emerging technologies and code have the potential to improve our planet’s well being. Believing in research based art, Studio Above&Below works with scientists, technologists and other artists to push the boundaries of digital media for future living. Over the last years, the duo has been using immersive technologies, such as AR and VR, with live data inputs, in order to turn the invisible visible and give our environment a voice to express itself. These artworks series are exploring the term ‚ecology of digital materials‘ in a place where nature, machines and humans come together, finding ways in which these systems collide and cooperate.

Studio Above&Below is a London based art and design practice founded by Daria Jelonek (DE) and Perry-James Sugden (UK) after graduating from the Royal College of Art. Their work combines computational design, speculative storytelling and digital art in order to draw together unseen connections between humans, machines and the environment. Believing in research based art, Studio Above&Below works with scientists, technologists and other artists to push the boundaries of digital media for future living. Over the last years the duo has created ground breaking artworks using immersive technologies such as AR and MR with live data inputs in order to make the invisible visible and give our environment a voice to express itself. The duo’s work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Royal Academy, Tate Modern, V&A London, Photophore during the Venice Biennale, Today Art Museum, WRO Biennale, SONAR, WIRED Japan, Hyundai Motorstudio and the International Shortfilm Festival Oberhausen. Previous prizes and fundings include the Near Now Fellowship, Collusion Art Funding, Lumen Prize (shortlisted), Bloomberg Bursary, WIRED Creative HackAward (finalist), Communication Arts Award – Interactive Art and the Battersea Sculpture Prize. Studio Above&Below regularly gives talks at culture and technology institutes such as Nottingham Contemporary, Retune Berlin, Microsoft Research, London Design Festival, Royal College for Art and Arebyte Gallery about the intersection of art, design, technology and its impact on the environment. Perry and Daria are current fellows at NEAR NOW, Nottingham and BOM, Birmingham.

Symbolically, we use the goddess name (Artemis) to invoke peculiar attributes of transformation and constant renewal. Driven by these qualities, our aim is to support the artists (emerging and established) in which we believe, in order to contribute to the development of their artistic process in Portugal and abroad. We’re building a structural mainframe, dialoguing with artists, customers, collectors, institutions and art fairs; We’re promoting a creative flow in an open and groundbreaking art space. As the first digital art gallery in Portugal, our aim is to belong to a remarkable art movement, actively working for this historical transition of world cycles. We’ll build a bridge between the present time and the time to come, allowing that, through art and technology, we can move ourselves to the future.