Keith Tyson (Turner Prize 2002) at Jerwood Gallery, Hastings. Phenomenal collection of sketches and sculptures. To be honest, his work slightly skipped my radar. The show is just my thing though, wall to wall sketches, paintings, collage in any materials to hand. Everything is given even intensity and hierarchy.

The sculptures are a real treat too, this ZX81 Spectrum motherboard enlarged is lovely. The solder joins all look real and the resistors appear to be made out of real glass and ceramic. These are all components I’ve soldered onto and off printed circuit boards. It’s amazing to see a resistor, not much larger than grain of rice in real life (and usually handled with needle nose pliers), displayed bigger than a tube of Polos. Although it does have a sign saying do not touch, it is very generously displayed without a cover, so one can get very close to it unobstructed. That’s one of the annoying things about Tate Modern (and the Melbourne Art Gallery for that matter). Every time you get close to something, bells start ringing and people in black shirts or navy blazers start whispering into walkie talkies.

The funny thing about it is that the ZX81 board is already an incredible piece of design/art in its own right, and socially what it represents–the beginning of the microcomputer age. The whole computer itself, or the motherboard could be stuck in a frame and put on a wall to be admired. This gigantic size version is like a reverse model train set, scaled up instead of down, and painstakingly reproduced at whatever scale it is. There was a moment whilst looking at it I thought it really had to be a functional model.

This is the odd thing about Keith Tyson’s work. The Spectrum piece is a feat of hobby craft, like that of making a fiendishly complex Airfix kit. It’s not ‘art’ as such really. If it is, the meaning is completely obtuse and hidden beyond the simple beauty of its craft. I think this show is a bit more about the sketchbooks, the working out, than finished pieces perhaps?