Sunday, June 6, 2010

Chandeliers

Um me.
Alejandro Almanza Pereda (see previous post) 's For Your Own Safety 2008

Studio Glithero - Sarah van Gameren and Tim Simpson's The Big Dipper 2007. Self producing literal candelabra!

Scanned from Bill Henson's Mnemosyne p269 (there was a more solemn and appropriate example, but I was a little apprehensive to post the image)


Terence Koh's These Decades That We Never Sleep - Black Light" 2008.

My pitiful and fleeting response to the idea of a chandelier seems to be one drawn from a rather large pool of contemporary consciousness, everywhere I've looked over the past two years there's been seemingly continuous references to this bourgeouis status symbol.
Interestingly enough, an object is all it is, but an object that stands for opulence, wealth and pure excess, the idea of appropriating and responding to status symbols was one that I was first made aware of during my brief study of Silversmithing/Metal Art at Monash University.
One of the first assignments that we were given was to respond to the news that a wealthy Asian business man had literally bought Melbourne's sewers, and numerous other rice consuming cities' in order to filter out the finite amount of gold, which is apparently in rice?! The concept was to attempt to decipher how such a task would redefine our perception of precious metals, it's an idea that stayed with me for quite some time (even though I didn't continue with the course), I believe that the continual parodies of chandeliers may also be of a similar reference point.
The juxtaposition of wealth/beauty and seemingly impoverished children in Henson's series is probably the most forceful of these ideas, hopefully this realization will help to improve my own response....

No comments:

Post a Comment