Decorative Art Interventions
Ben Wheele; An on-going series of artists and curatorial projects creating work in response to, or adding items to, the decorative art collection.
Ben Wheele
Decoration , 2011
Video 6.25 Mins
Usher Gallery, Gallery 7
Wheele works with the two opposing views pathos and disgust, or the grotesque and appealing.
‘Pathos’ is used to describe part of a speech, or text, which appeals to the human side of us all, the caring, emotive and emotional aspects of our personality.
A politician may make a tax rise seem more appealing by using ‘pathos’ while describing how it will help the ill or those in need, talking to our caring side to remove our initial disgust of a tax rise.
Wheele uses this method visually, using the pathos of the decorative or beautiful to help us to consider the disgusting and grotesque.
Wheele creates works which borrow images from the baroque (decorative) to appeal to us visually. When we look closer we come to the realisation that parts of, or the content of the work are in fact grotesque.
In the past Wheele’s works have included psychedelic patterns that are actually films of bowels, diseases and microscopic organisms. The characters in the world created by the artist kill their own pets, and shoot birds for no apparent reason.
The mixture of the decorative and disgusting encourages us to consider what might lie behind other types of beauty.
Do you know where your possessions come from, and who made them?
If a worker in a sweat shop, in terrible living conditions, produces a beautiful object can it ever truly be said to be beautiful?
We would like you to consider how this might relate to the beautiful items in our own collections, and under what circumstances these may have been produced?
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