The words on this page are: –
‘Someone was God and she was always flirting with him’
‘In her empire of Junk’
My first thought were to go with artists who were either spiritual, God Fearing or who just celebrated God: William Blake sprang to mind. But then when I thought about it further, it seemed to me that perhaps ‘God‘ taken in this context, might be some sort of hero figure. There is also a strange kind of romance going on: almost comic book or Mills and Boon. Perhaps I should have tied some tiny tin cans to the threads that are wrapped around the hearts…. perhaps not eh.
The words ‘Someone’ was God, suggests that the person is in favour or in the good books or is the flavour of the month (or however long it lasts). Andy Warhol said that ‘everyone will be famous for 15 minutes’. Coupled with ‘the empire of junk’,my thoughts then began to turn to our throwaway society, transient and fleeting. Trashy romances, tabloid fodder: tomorrows chip paper. Also the darlings of the Art world, here today gone tomorrow, little microcosms of human life and struggles.
Gavin Turk (b.Guildford UK 1967) exhibited a sculpture in the now famous ‘Sensation’ of 1993. ‘Pop’ was a statue in a vitrine of the artist himself as Sid Vicious imitating the pose of Andy Warhol’s painting of Elvis as a cowboy.
Turk was trying to get across the idea of the artist as an icon: in a sense the artist’s ‘death’ by becoming an embalmed pop icon. Turk has turned himself into a prop, an object, a brand name, a commodity. He has turned a bin bag into a painted bronze; a dirty old sleeping bag into a painted sculpture. All the viewer needs to take, is that leap of faith and suspension of disbelief for a moment to ‘get’ Turks art.
UK artist Marc Quinn (again) has a fascination with Greek art, which has led to his sculpture ‘Siren’. The sculpture is of the famous British model Kate Moss and is made entirely of gold. Quinn is alluding to Moss’s stature as an icon, like one of the Greek Goddess of the ancient world: a Goddess for our time.
UK artist Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s (1966 and 1967) instillation was literally a pile of old rubbish collected from the streets of London. ‘Dirty White Trash with Gulls’shows a mountain of rubbish with a projected light showing two shadows on the wall (the artists themselves). The shadows of two people are surprising given the shape of the rubbish: unexpected. This instillation was included in the opening show at County Hall London of the Saatchi Gallery.
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