The hopes and dreams of the workers as they wandered home from the bar
July 20 – August 17, 2025
Press Release
The hopes and dreams of the workers as they wandered home from the bar
2005
Red glitter, size .015, 600gm per square metre.
Edition 3
I used to ask people “Where’s the local glitter factory?” and no one could ever tell me. I found out modern glitter was perfected on a cattle farm in New Jersey in 1934. Glitter, kilo for kilo, is a drug-like commodity. You can go to one city, buy two kilos of glitter for the same price as a tiny vial somewhere else. It has a very uneven commodity status. I can’t tell you if people are happy in glitter factories, whether glitter factories are organised collectively or a “Glitter Board” regulates them. I have used it in my work as a constant. My use of glitter exposes certain production complications along with an acknowledgement of modernist art history. The earliest works involved me cleaning the floor with glitter mixed with whisky or vodka. Once you have done this you can see where the floor has been cleaned and labour is exposed. The works are a cumulative negative: so if cleaning is a reductive act, then cleaning with glitter is an additive reduction. At the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 2005 I just spread vast quantities of red glitter with no cleaning, but of course, red glitter is red snow and red snow is what you get in times of revolution. My work is often about defining the softer, unclear spaces within the social context that were intended to ameliorate conditions. It is diagnostic rather than viral. But there are times where you need a picture that has been transposed.