:: Dead Cars

This series is primarily about questions of aesthetic value; why we make the judgements we do, and the way beauty can arise from an interplay of chaos and structure.

Consumer culture aspires to a sterile and immobile perfection, one reflection of which is the time and money lavished on a car by its owner. Alas when some joy-rider then has their evil way with it, culminating in a dump and burn. The more expensive a car, the more a shame it seems to people when this fate befalls it. Regardless of the morality of these acts, consumerism shackles our aesthetic judgement within the sanctioned constraints of fashion and tradition.

Once the protective layers of wax and paint are stripped by fire, a natural landscape can take hold of the wreck and gradually absorb it. Corners and edges are rounded, surfaces are roughened and occluded. Parts disintegrate to fragments and dust, forming chaotic arrangements. While still recognisable as a car, features of the wreck become intelligible as natural rather than artificial, and occasionally these features echo larger landforms on a macroscopic scale. The landscape transforms the wreck into a part of itself, and if left for long enough, there would barely be any sign a wreck had been present at all.

Nevertheless, most people simply dismiss them as eyesores. The camera is a perfect tool for excluding the context that precedes such responses.

• Exhibited:
  Creative Collaborations Course 1 beamer Event
  12 - 03 - 2004
• Enjoy The Ride
  05 - 02 - 2004

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