A mutual love of side-scroller platform video games has fuelled this collaborative project between New York-based New Zealander Jess Johnson and Simon Ward, who lives in Wellington. Johnson’s immensely detailed drawings of imaginary worlds provide the starting point for the Bunker building on the Gallery forecourt, which becomes the ‘cover art’ of an invented medieval fantasy game. The digital screens in the Gallery’s Bayleys Knight Frank Foyer feature animated scenes from that imaginary game, rendered in pixel art, an aesthetic derived from early video games. Eventually the artists plan to develop a playable side-scroller video game as an extension of this project.
Commissioned by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
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A mutual love of side-scroller platform video games has fuelled this collaborative project between New York-based New Zealander Jess Johnson and Simon Ward, who lives in Wellington. Johnson’s immensely detailed drawings of imaginary worlds provide the starting point for the Bunker building on the Gallery forecourt, which becomes the ‘cover art’ of an invented medieval fantasy game. The digital screens in the Gallery’s Bayleys Knight Frank Foyer feature animated scenes from that imaginary game, rendered in pixel art, an aesthetic derived from early video games. Eventually the artists plan to develop a playable side-scroller video game as an extension of this project.
Commissioned by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.
