The Purge

Finally, the quarter is drawing to a close and I am nearly done with regurgitating my half digested thoughts into some kind of communicable form. This is my first experience of the academic quarter system (we don't have such a thing in Australia) and so far I have decided that it is something akin to being a goose stuffed for academic pâté.

Which segues neatly into the work that I have produced for my art project. Entitled The Purge, the work consists of a toasting oven that spews out white foaming soap. Placed on a pedestal that has been clad in kitchen flooring vinyl and accompanied by a video of a the same burnt out toasting oven smoking against a lush backdrop of leaves, The Purge, is designed to reference the dometsic space of consumption and cleanliness and the aesthetic of 'the end' that is so central to American cultural mythology, particularly in this time of economic collapse.

The making of the installation involved getting on top of a host of things that I had never done before in a fairly short period of time. It was a crazy couple of weeks over the summer break leading up to the Devil-May-Care exhibition that opened on the 12th of January, where the work was premiered. One of the things that I found the hardest to figure out was a good system for restocking the soap (hidden in the pedestal) and how to get the consistency right so that it didn't just run everywhere. I ended up adding large amounts of laxative powder (a readily available source of polyethylene glycol) to make the soap foam, which I thought was appropriate given the subject and title of the show.

I am looking forward to have an opportunity to fix it up a little for the next run. Below are some images of the work installed in the Devil-May-Care exhibition.