Exhibitions Archive (Search Results)

Bring Our Curses Home

September 18 – November 7, 2010

Location: Hatch Family Gallery, 3rd floor

Bring Our Curses Home deals with aspects of disenfranchisement, alienation and consumption that characterize suburban youth culture in many parts of the world. Chris Down, David Poolman and Roman Tkaczyk investigate similar themes of rebellion, aggressive posturing and the often violent rejection of stultifying cultural norms. For example, the attraction of Death Metal music, according to Poolman "is its ideological dissent from and destruction of the status quo, its embracement of ‘otherness', and its utter rejection of all music and thought that came before it". Similarly, Tkaczyk subtitles his series of digital drawings of conveniences hidden in switchblade handles "Weapons for Everyday Life", implying the need to arm oneself with objects and ideas in order to survive in an increasingly hostile world. Using images of mosh pits, mud bogging and roller derbies, Down explores practices which release violent and erotic energy in ecstatic, anti-social, anti-productive activities, a resistance to ‘usefulness' which is potentially subversive of our culture's current means-end rationalism.

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