(Gold covered tissues that I may display with golden pieces of Fried chicken I have cast out of plastic)
Now I'm sitting down and trying to make sense of this work (Beautiful Inside My Stomach Forever) and where it fits into, if it does, what I've been focusing on. Previous to this work, I had made a screen print of a wetherspoons curry club place mat, attempting to somehow make a non-biased comment on the low-culture food establishment, surveying this part of British culture and also paying homage to it by taking the work back into the venue, using it for the same purpose as the product from which it was copied. With the fried chicken project, parts are comparable to the wetherspoons print, its like an inner city version in a way. I am paying homage to fried chicken and at the same time suggesting an overstated value by an aesthetic change, for humorous effect. This is the same idea as taking the wetherspoons place mat and turning it into an art object, except the plastic chicken cannot be returned to the same use of the product of which it is a re-creation, because it cannot be eaten. The performative element of the wetherspoons place mat project is something I want to try and carry into further works, I often have thoughts about how to challenge the idea of a typical white cube space and what it really stands for amongst the forefront of contemporary art today. After visiting the Jeremy Deller show at the Hayward I really felt a further push to try and add a level of intervention into this work, I thought about leaving it in a fried chicken shop, or outside one on the street, I could have documented the response. However, my cynical attitude conjured nothing but images of kids in hoodies smashing the work or throwing it in the road/bin etc, which for me would have been a waste and meant parting ways with £75 worth of plastic. I wanted the work to do more than intervene in 5 minutes of the lives of some teenagers. I believe that if the same people, that might find this work on the street as an intervention, found this work in a gallery environment, it would prompt a lot more thought on the subject of the greasy delight. So how could I involve some sort of level of performance similar to taking the curry club place mat back to wetherspoons? My idea is to bring a bucket of fried chicken to the private view of the assessment. I will position the golden chicken in the box and bag on the floor of the foyer, with a golden tissue near by. Placing it on the floor will play with people's perception adding an element of surprise if they are willing to look inside the bag. Originally I thought about placing the box on a plinth, perhaps under a spot light, thus amplifying the fact they are gold. However, I think there is a reference to litter problems in London by placing it on the floor, the box and bag I have used will be familiar sights to London inhabitants. So, what references have I got here;
- trends in sub-cultures
- question of value
- throw-away culture/litter
- celebration of culture
Here is an animation created from from a scan of the box the golden chicken pieces are housed in.
I was potentially going to show this on a plasma screen in the foyer as an added extra but it seemed a confusing distraction from the other work.
