Object(ive)

While the political pronouncements of Tracey Emin’s blanket, Barbara Kruger’s juxtaposed image and Jenny Holzer’s footstool can be readily identified, less apparent is each artist’s embrace and utilization of an everyday existent object as artistic substrate. Not to be confused with the Duchampian readymade, these objects are not conceptually transformed by the artist, but rather hand crafted to subversively fit in to their societal milieu—disseminating their critique covertly. 

Object(ive) grapples both with artists’ use of everyday objects as substrate, and in turn these artworks’ pursuit of a social objective. The notion of time pervades the exhibition, from Emin’s grappling with China’s One-Child Policy, to Lichtenstein’s isolation of reflection as a perceived moment in time.  

Roy Lichtenstein’s Reflections paintings (1988-90) were first inspired by his attempt to photograph a Robert Rauschenberg print under glass as the light reflected back as a distortion. Lichtenstein’s interest then shifted to documenting a perception, rather than the object itself. The distorted experience encouraged Lichtenstein to engage with the passage of time—revisiting his use of comic strips and the brushstroke as source material, referencing earlier bodies of work such as the Mirror Paintings (1969-1972) and Stretcher Frame Paintings (1967-1973)—by insisting upon the reflection as a moment of experiential reality that could only exist in relation to a viewer.

The familiarity between the viewer and each of these objects—blankets, cats, reflections and footstools—is central to the success of any social objective. Just as we are put at ease and draw in, these artworks reveal their true intentions.