One out of three cafetieres that got handed in to the repair shop...which says something about the quality of these things maybe?
The first object that got handed in to the repair shop was also very typical of the things we would get in the coming four weeks. We were offered a total of three cafetières, all with missing glass containers, which indicates their weak point I think. This didn’t matter at the time of course, since it was the first object and without the whole month to compare with a very unique piece to start with. Peter Lewis Ross who handed it in was really there to do a radio piece for BBC Scotland, but of course he also wanted his own sculpture. What I did was more a response to his job and maybe his personality than so much to the cafetière.
A powerful brew.
Since Peter expressed an anticipation of something quite fantastic emerging from the broken everyday object he gave me, I tried of course to not disappoint him, by imagining something grand, spectacular and surprising.
Can nuclear weapons ever become kitsch?
Choosing ceramics as a material with a lot of associations to craft, and loose figuration as the kitschy way of making art, I took on an impossible subject matter. A nuclear mushroom cloud, for your kitchen. My hope was that it would also actually function as a coffee pot, which I believe it would only that washing it after use would be almost impossible. But a nuclear explosion is also almost impossible to wash away.
Not really dishwasher safe.
Nuclear terror fascinates me as a kind of horror scenario we have gotten so used to, and bored of, that it doesn’t scare us any more. Why really are we more afraid of terrorists that could at the very worst kill as many of us as a small fraction of the yearly death toll on our roads, than of the thousands of nuclear weapons still waiting out there for a politician stupid enough to push the famous button? Have we started trusting politicians? Or is our fear of a specific phenomenon simply proportional to how much media reminds us to be afraid of it? Something for a journalist to think about.
Object no. 1