Amber Boardman: The Puppet Show

The Puppet Show explores what happens to human storytelling now that machines can generate narratives of their own. Drawing on the visual language of theatre, Amber Boardman transforms the gallery into an uncanny playhouse where ancient mythic scenes meet the infrastructure of artificial intelligence.

Paintings appear like performers or puppets poised before a digital backstage, where server stacks replace ropes and pulleys. Though the exhibition interrogates simulated storytelling, every element is built by hand: oil paintings, hand-modelled 3D environments, and a 17 metre vinyl set.

Hovering between nostalgia and computation, The Puppet Show asks who is pulling the strings in an age when the systems we’ve created may be shaping our stories, and us, in return.