You enter the room into blackness. An image of a solitary abstract plastic leg lingers in the corner of the screen. Glistening objects slowly fill the darkness. The pace quickens and these mundane household objects begin to whir and gyrate across the screen. The beat kicks in, and words begin to flash up onto the projection.
We have designated this place/this place here/ a hall/ it is a hall of sculptures/ though nothing in it would deserve that name/
This is the opening scene in Elizabeth Price's recent work 'User Group Disco'. Her 15 minute HD film, shown in galleries around the UK from London to Glasgow, spectacularly highlighting a humdrum of everyday objects propelling them into a higher state of importance underlining the theme of consumerism so relavent in our society.
It feels like we only ever catch a glimpse of these glossy devices, sleek and lustrous, seducing us further into the arms of consumerism. Words reminiscent of some abstract motivational seminar feel slightly hypnotic mixed in with the mesmerizing beat of the music. Even more disturbing is the eerily post -apocalyptic quality attached to them. The amalgamation of miscellaneous objects continues to flicker and spin across the screen, a combination of artefacts and household objects both displaying equal grandeur. Left wondering how to classify these objects, you linger intrigued.
Price is particularly concerned with archives and taxonomies: ‘ I don’t want my work to be seen as institutional critique, but perhaps one of its descendents. I’m interested in working with it not as a failed project but as an unfulfilled narrative.’
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