James Cook started making work on typewriters when he was studying A-level art. “We were asked to look at how technology throughout the ages had been adopted by artists,” he says. “At first, I studied David Hockney, who used fax machines, but then I got my hands on a typewriter and looked at artist Paul Smith’s work. He had cerebral palsy and used a typewriter to create stunning works.” Since then Cook has collected more than 60 typewriters. “My favourite is the 1968 Olympia SG3.” Based in east London, Cook’s main focus is making architectural typewritten “drawings”, but he has also recreated a series of celebrated works by painters including Vermeer, Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo, “to remind people that some technologies will never die.”
