Margaux's Critique

(i forgot to take a photo of margaux's piece)

When entering the critique space I was confronted by two scenes, one of a off white painted wall with potatoes painted the same off white hanging from wire and the other of three potatoes attached in the same way to the adjacent wall but painted the same colour as the potato under the paint.


The beauty of this piece was in the detail, when approaching the wall with the white potatoes you see the fluid dribbling from the rotting potato and the eyes forcing their way through the paint. The piece is still evolving as you stand there; it's still growing and dying at the same time. On an even slower level of evolution gravity is also taking its toll on the piece, the potatoes sagging down on top of each other like old skin.

Interestingly the art is no longer in the hands of the artist, gravity and rot have taken over the work and the result is in their hands. The potato is neutral vegetable, it does not have any particular defining features, and when painted white this attribute is highlighted further, this means that as a viewer you can not help but examine the details.

The adjacent wall, which has only a single wire with three potato's on, highlights some different views, by painting the potatoes the colour of a fresh potato, I could not help but feel that it was giving quite a different message to the other wall, the feeling of attempted preservation made me think of the lengths people go to in order to hold on to both their youth and their looks.


Over and out.