A Digital Suicide by Liam Scully | The book launch preview at Matt's Gallery

Private life has certainly become public life and private life has become art; Tracey Emin gave us her bed, and now Scully gives us every poke, post and private message of his online life. Come, and look on sadistically at an act of public execution for the new epoch; the “digital suicide” of Liam Scully.

A heavy online-liver from 2008-2013, Scully decided to delete social media and eliminate his online presence. When committing this deed of “digital suicide”, Facebook offers the opportunity to download all your data; even that thought deleted. You can relapse and return to as you once were, or scan through every sordid detail of your online past.

Post-Snowden, Scully has taken ownership in reclaiming his online self and spent a year artistically documenting this data to publish to the public. Every page of meta-data has been printed onto pink thermal electrocardiograph paper and every photograph has been recorded in drawings, collages, marks, rubs, spillages and stains. The digital has become as permanent on paper as it is online; provoking fascination, sensational gratification, and concern. Their vulnerable, chunkily-crafted beauty has been bound in five large-scale, limited edition books which will be on display on Friday 13th November (1830-2100); as well ‘In loving memory’, a limited edition obituary-book by friend and art writer Elizabet Homersham. 

Friday 13th November, 1830 – 2100 @ X MARKS THE BÖKSHOP, Matt’s Gallery, 42-44 Copperfield Road, London, E3 4RR