dream job
Incorporating multiple works under the collective installation title Dream Job, David M. Thomas’s exhibition principally consists of three digital video sequences projected and framed by an abstract background set.
The video work adapts the Saturday detention scene from the film The Breakfast Club (Director, John Hughes, 1985). An off-screen interviewer poses broadly sweeping questions including ‘what is important to you’ and ‘how do you feel about people’ to which Thomas’s five teenage actors recite strangely polished statements concerning the nature of identity, perception and creative enterprise. The nonprofessional actors’ rehearsed and detached statements seem to be beyond their years and their subtle gestures lack conviction. The absolutely conclusive giveaway is when one of the teenage actors states that: ‘I never thought I would have a home studio, like I always liked being in the studio, and then just one day I was sitting on the couch, staring out the window, and thinking this is costing like a thousand dollars a day, just to stare out the window’. (Jay Mascis of Dinosaur Jr).
The source of all the actors’ statements are: writer Charles Bukowski; actor Marlin Brando; Jay Mascis musician of Dinosaur Jr; James Newell Osterberg Jr aka Iggy Pop and actor Brooke Shields. Each become unlikely collaborators in Thomas’s script, their statements having been lifted directly from interviews available from YouTube. It is as if Thomas has been researching and preparing for a fantasy interview. Complete with an almost dreamlike set.
In the gallery, the projections are framed by a bright geometric wall painting inspired by iconic 1970s sets such as ‘The Benny Hill Show’, or ‘The Dick Cavett Show’, which aired opposite ‘The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson’