Prometheus continues the exploration of collaborative painting that The Customs House and Newcastle University Fine Art started through Glaucus & Scylla (2022), this time beginning with the myth of Prometheus from Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

The project explores the challenge of the creator, how this creation can rebel against perceived authorities, and the consequences of doing so. Simultaneously, the artists question the notion of what it is to be a painter, taking the artists out of the stereotypical ‘solitary confinement’ of the studio and bringing them together into a collaborative group to challenge the very way they think about their painting practice.

In conflict with this is another creator, a pseudo-participant made using Artificial Intelligence (AI). This AI disrupts our creation while simultaneously generating something new. In this way we turn the myth on its head, do we consider the merit of this non-human creation or do we condone it? And in doing so, what does that say about us as artists?