My work is concerned with exploring the
phenomenon of compulsive hoarding. I do so through appropriation of a range of
imagery originated by someone else’s hand. I try to mirror the hoarder’s
excessive acquisition and inability to discard huge amounts of objects by
collecting and also making numerous original images. I create detailed copies
of imagery and arrange them together; the completed collage is then obliterated
by dripping and splashing paint, to mirror the level of dirt which collects
naturally on the excessive collections of hoarders. All items which hold the
images and paint splashes were found in skips and these are then arranged into
an installation arranged to mirror the experience of walking through the home
of a compulsive hoarder.
Various types of plastic bags have also
been incorporated into the installation as these are also common items which
everyone tends to save or perhaps ‘hoard’. I am particularly interested in the
human behaviours involved in our need to continuously re-engage the past by
consciously or subconsciously reconfiguring certain preferred elements of a
particular culture or period of time. I specifically include the original found
images that I have made my own paintings and drawings of, to play a game by
quite literally showing how appropriation recontextualises whatever it borrows
to create a new work, a new hoard.
www.eileenkennyart.blogspot.com
