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MALTATODAY 1 September 2019

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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 1 SEPTEMBER 2019 5 THIS WEEK ART happiness in the time of late capitalism images. It's also about want- ing something you know may be bad for you. In my still photography I deal with these ideas too, for example, I look a lot at the kind of tropes of photog- raphy that sell us an idea of how we are supposed to live, and I rework and manipulate these pictures to try and re- veal the politics behind them. By tropes I mean for exam- ple, the architectural still life which tells us which history we are supposed to find im- portant, or a commercial still life which tells us what to buy, a studio portrait of a woman as described by patri- archy and capitalism, or an idealised nature photograph which may not be as "natu- ral" as it seems. The popularity and instantaneousness of social media is often held up as a bugbear against depth and considered meaning, particularly where the more supposedly 'elevated' forms of art – such as conceptual and fine art, literature, certain kinds of music – are concerned. How do you feel about this, and would you say your work engages with this dynamic in a significant way? I think that I am trying to grasp something of the over- whelming amount of choice we have now and the over- whelming number of things there are to look at. Think- ing about the crazy way the image world feels now was a big impetus for me to start making video work. I really wanted to be able to trans- late the feeling of being so overwhelmed by choices that may not really be choices (for example, whether to buy the pink or black iPhone is not a real choice, nor is choos- ing whether to look at Kylie versus Kendall Jenner). The films have a sort of rapid pace of endless consumer choice or endless things to look at, as if they have a hypothetical viewer in mind who can only pay attention to something for half a second before they need a new thing. Which is often how it feels to be in the world of social media. But I think there is a lot to be done with social me- dia too, for example, I have been trying to make more considered videos for Insta- gram and use it as a platform for art making. Although it has many many problems, I still love the democracy of this platform and I like think- ing about how it is increas- ingly shaping the way we see – in short clips or indi- vidual images, squares, with subtitles, and so on, we are becoming used to looking at things through this. How do you feel like exhibiting in a venue like Blitz in Valletta, and how do you think your work resonates with the dynamics of a place like Malta? I loved exhibiting in Malta. I was so excited about Mal- ta's particular mash-up of different time periods and influences, I felt this had a big kinship to my work. I was really excited about the proximity of my show to the co-cathedral of Saint John, for example. The baroque is a period I've been thinking a lot about lately (particu- larly in the piece in the show called A Rococo Base) as a period that closely mirrors our own time in its excess, in the way everything was cov- ered in detail and everything was completely visually satu- rated. It also mirrors our own time in that all the wealth was really concentrated at the top politically (in the Gilded Age) so they too had a 1% like we do in America, and a very huge wealth disparity. What's next for you? I am working on an ex- hibition in February at the Approach, in London, and I am currently working on a project at MoMA work- ing through their collection to make new video works (which are actually being posted on Instagram!). The works are thinking about what MoMA's collection tells us about how we see ourselves and our history in ways that are often skewed or idealised (which also con- nects to good life fantasies). It is a sort of revisiting of John Berger's 1972 piece Ways of Seeing, which looked at the role of art objects in perpetu- ating certain ideologies, and also the way they get taken up and used by capitalism in order to sell things. The Good Life will be on display at Blitz, St Lucy Street, Valletta until 20 September Magenta Rose, Pink Rose by Sara Cwynar

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