Matthew Darbyshire

After visiting the British Art Show at the Royal William Yard, we had to chose one piece of art and write critically about it. This installation by Matthew Darbyshire was the one that stuck in my mind. Completely put together with ready-mades, it presents countless unnecessary items, resembling a shop display or an over-decorative home. Most of us understand these objects to be modern clutter. I think that I am interested in this piece because I dislike what it is presenting. I feel that Darbyshire does a brilliant job of providing us with a 3-dimensional snapshot of what modern consumerism can lead to - over investing on solely visual value. Maybe, as an artist, I should be excited by this and use it to my benefit when creating my own art, but I can't help but feel that the way we are encouraged to continually by new things that we don't need is ridiculous. Most of the items in this installation have no obvious purpose, but to sit on a shelf. Preferably a clean white modernist shelf!

To me, it seems that people are constantly and persuasively told by our surroundings that we need to buy, collect and display in order to build on our image and to show off our contribution to the market. As if it doesn't cause dramatic damage to our world. When did our society become driven by consumerism?

I've learnt that Matthew Darbyshire's piece shares is title with another artwork from 1949, however this piece celebrated the collection of brightly coloured 'stuff', buying for only visual purpose and mass production. I'm unsure exactly where the idea came from (I think a lot of people are), but I understand that the shift to our consumerist culture was hoped to be the perfect resolution to post-war trauma. No, I can't even begin to imagine how devastating the world was during/after the war, but in no case would I believe that buying and buying and buying was the key to happiness.

So, I interpret this installation to provide awareness to the viewer of how much we need not consume. We are drowning in the concept of  'buying more to earn higher status'. Not each and every one of us, but as a whole. The importance of owning things is shoved in our face through the media hundreds of times a day, so it's hard to take a step out of it and think logically. I'm not sure if Darbyshire made this with exactly this in mind, but I enjoy my interpretation of it, as it is a topic I wish to create art about.

Now, to contradict everything I have just said, I went out on my lunch break to 'purposely' buy and item of no purpose (it was secondhand, only £1.00 and from a charity shop, but still) to write my critical evaluation on. I hoped that this would in turn become a piece of art inspired by Mathew Darbyshire's installation, as well as my response to it.