The cult of consumption
The Age
Saturday January 9, 2010
ART Tribal imagery is echoed in an exploration of mass production, writes Angela Blakston. IKEA, that Swedish juggernaut of all things homely, and some would say mass-produced, has been high on the mind of artist Adam Cruickshank lately. He's been on various expeditions there and, like a bowerbird, has collected bits and pieces to build into his nest of ideas and concerns.The works he's created from these trips appear simple and minimal: a necklace of lead pencils bearing the Ikea branding on a single, delicate strand of thread. There's a bicycle helmet, decorated in more Ikea pencils and measuring tape and other found and used objects, aptly named Ikea Headdress. Another, Koniglichen Stuhl (Royal Chair), belies its regal name to bear up to four Ikea stools, stacked up and weaved with electrical wire and cable ties.Look at the total picture these pieces create, and the venue for this small exhibition, Craft Victoria, and you can see the multi-layered concerns Cruickshank is raising.Cruickshank has called his exhibition Reverse Cargo, a play on the cargo cult, a type of religious practice that appeared in tribes in remote Papua New Guinea, with the interaction of more technologically advanced societies. For instance, cargo-cult activity spiked during and after World War II, when tribes saw, for the first time, American and Japanese materials and manpower being flown in on their doorsteps. When the war ended so did the flow of materials and goods.On a simplistic level, assuming the newcomers were spirits with divine powers, the tribes engaged in rituals such as building wooden aircraft and radios, imitation landing strips and mimicking the behaviour of military personnel to attract the delivery of goods. The phenomenon appeared among tribes who coveted the foreigners' equipment but were unable to obtain them through trade or established traditions.In Reverse Cargo, Cruickshank uses this idea of the cult €” he heard about it when in PNG for the last three years of his schooling €” but takes mass-produced objects and reworks, or reverses, them into totems or charms.But what has all this got to do with Ikea, with us and the way we buy goods? Probably nothing or a lot, depending on how you view it. Cruickshank is quick to say he's not trying to make judgments, simply to raise questions. If you want to see the link, though, you might say cargo cults are just like the way we've come to think €” and want €” and Ikea, with its grip on the Western world, is a great symbol for mass-production and consumption."I think we live in the biggest cargo cult that ever lived. Everybody strives to have more money just to consume more stuff," he says."It's funny, though, because with Ikea, rather than making objects that are vested with emotion and spiritual or ancestral meaning, like they make in various traditional cultures, it's the opposite of that. Ikea goods are deliberately void so when you get them into your house you make them your own. And part of that feeling is conferred by actually having to make the object."Again, Cruickshank, trying not to cast stones, says he has his own Ikea objects finding a practical place in the home he shares with partner Dell Stewart, a Melbourne artist with craft leanings.Instead, he aims to use Ikea, cargo cults €” and humour in the works €” as the basis for his main concern: "Primarily, it's about the mass-produced versus the hand-made and why we seem to have forgone one in favour of the other."When I point out to Cruickshank that there has been a return to an appreciation for the handmade, a resurgence of the craft movement, he argues that as a culture, on the whole, there hasn't been."They (hand-made items) are becoming more influential but what is bigger than that is the shallow approximation of those things, in that you can buy jeans with holes ripped in them by a machine . . . to make them look handmade."Cruickshank has an idea about corporate and cultural manipulation. Many of his exhibitions, covering various mediums, have touched or focused on this idea.He has also crossed over to the other side and held design positions in advertising. One experience, in particular, left him questioning his contribution to society. "I worked for two years in a health-care advertising agency, which tried to make doctors buy drugs. One of the brands, an antidepressant, there was controversy because of its reported links to suicide. We used to sell it as the most amazing transformative device. Well, other people wrote that, but I designed the pretty brochures, so I was complicit."The older I get the more concerned I am about what my contribution might be. I'd rather it be negligible than bad; I'd rather it be nothing than bad."Reverse Cargo runs from January 21-March 6, at Craft Victoria, Gallery 3, 31 Flinders Lane, city.
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