I have been taking photographs of jugs and teapots that I have in my household. This is the start of a new series of works in which I am exploring still life and the idea of commodity fetish. Why do we collect things and what does it mean for us? So often we will buy an item for the house that we deem as expressing a certain message, whether this be a fashion statement (oh, this is very Parisian looking) or indicative of a particular style (this is so retro!). Why do we care? Many philosophers will say this is to do with desire and our need to be perceived in a certain way. Some will say it’s all about sex; others; a more general requirement to be accepted and to be seen in a good light. Modern life is not just filled with objects that are created for functionality, but also ones that suggests something desirable. The objects in a sense take on magical powers.
Anyway I could wax lyrical about philosophy, the object and fetish but would rather write specifically about my art development I am currently working on. Still life as an art genre is a popular thing and whilst I think it has a lot to do with what we like and what it represents as a subject matter, still life does tend to be more accessible than other subjects. This perhaps makes it an easier subject matter to explore. Think about cubism for example and how Picasso and Braque were able to depict the idea of multifaceted objects on a flat plane. We all know an object has multiple sides but in art such as painting, traditionally we could only ever display one side. Cubism provided a vehicle to subvert this.
I recently went to a very good exhibition in the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester called ‘The shape of things: Still life in Britain’. This exhibition gave a wide encompassing range of ways still life has been represented and gave me the inspiration to start upon my new series of work. I chose jug and teapots, not just because I happen to have a fair number of them but also because I have them in a wide variety of styles and from different periods of time. Some I have inherited, others I have collected along the way.
As in the wider scheme of things I am exploring fragmentation and modernity, I see the commodity fetish of objects as being part of this. Hence I am trying to break down the certainty of these objects in the environment in which they sit. Its early days but I include here some images of some works on paper I have created recently.
