Criteria Exhibition: Domestic Disturbances

Commercial design production typically results in concrete statements couched in positive terms, which celebrate consumerism, consumer products and the munificent culture that produced them. Theorist Guy Debord characterized the psycho¬-philosophical underpinnings of this mediated environment in the following terms, ‘Everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear.’ The work presented here attempts to challenge this narrative by supplanting it with a counter narrative expressed through seemingly innocuous products imbued with messages that are commercially unviable. For instance, wallpaper designs that call in to question basic assumptions about the purpose of textile designs for domestic applications. In addition to being decorative and aesthetically pleasing could textile patterns also be emotive and consciousness-raising with regard to current topics including the United States’ drone program or casualty rates among US military service members? All of the work has gone into some form of production or manufacture to produce multiples, if for no other reason than to diminish their potential value as a one-of-a-kind objet d’art. When considered in toto, this ongoing body of work provides a highly selective, idiosyncratic, visual history of early 21st Century fin de siècle angst.