Completed Mixed - Media Piece: 'Fridge 5'

'Fridge 5', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen-Print, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish & Magnetic Letters
On Salvaged Refrigerator Door, 64 cm X 49 cm, 2018 

Here's the fifth of my 'Fridge' pieces, which seem to be coming fairly thick and fast just now  (by my standards, at least).  '5' essentially follows the same basic template laid down in the previous four (which can be sampled here, here, here, and here), so I'll detain you just long enough to highlight a couple of points specific to this latest version. 

I talk a lot about the 'key motifs' within my overall 'This S(c)epic Isle' project (under which banner - all this stuff belongs).  These recurring subjects all relate to specific features of my local urban surroundings, but also act as possible clues or signifiers, either to current socio-political preoccupations, or just to the way we live now.  In each case to date, they derive from my own photography - and this feels important.  The fact is, many of these subject categories might seem pretty cliched, were it not for the fact that I observe them all around me each day.  Like all the best cliches, they actually contain a significant kernel of truth, as my regular photographic forays prove.  The white vans are parked up all around me, even as I write, and I only need to glance out of the window to view yet another of the evicted fridges which are so ubiquitous as to constitute another variety of street furniture.  'Fridge 5' introduces another species of the motifs - the wandering supermarket trolley. 

I've noticed that these recurrent totems increasingly interconnect in their associations, as I go on with all this. The fridges themselves may relate to ideas of fluctuating short-term tenancy, the ubiquity of cheap consumer durables (and their built-in obsolescence), or perhaps to the relationship of food intake in raw ingredients in many contemporary homes.  And, just as the couriers' vans might indicate the means of delivery of at least some of these fridges, when purchased - the shopping trolleys may relate to the items that once stocked them.  Their disconnected migration to the local street corners and alleyways may indicate some frequently-witnessed variety of consumer larceny, but is also, I suspect, indicative of a population often unable to afford a vehicle with which to cart all that heavy stuff away.  The movement of the fridges outdoors, once their usefulness is terminated, could indicate a similar problem - along with an inability (or reluctance) to stump-up the costs of 'appropriate disposal'.  

My final observation here, relates to the textual element.  As before, the legend picked out in fridge-magnets, is extracted from my 'Below The Line / Beneath Contempt' text.  As such, its sentiments originate in the scurrilous 'below the line' online debate over the dreaded 'B'-word, which seeded that piece, some months back.  Reading it again however, I can't help wondering if it might also contain an element of self-reflexivity with regard to this whole project of mine.  Gotta laff - ain't yer?