conversations 1955 – 2005 sites 1980 – 2005
Elizabeth Gower is a collector. She has spent the last twenty-five years collecting household objects, cast-offs, books, and most recently, advertising material. But Gower is no junk mail junkie, scouring her neighbour’s letterboxes for spare Officeworks catalogues. Her collecting has a purpose. She gives particular attention to the things in these catalogues, which far from being necessities, appeal to our aesthetic desire to look good and be surrounded by finery: leather shoes, gold bracelets, designer toasters, sports equipment. She cuts out various pictures of the same object and composes elaborate patterned collages on drafting film. They look like quilts, snowflakes, knitting rows, or DNA. One series, Artefacts from the 20th Century; features a composition of 1990s style runners; they seem cool or lame, depending on your experience of the decade. These works operate both as mini time capsules and commentary on unfulfillable consumer desire—the minute we slip the ‘newest’ fashion on our foot, another ‘new’ is already on the way.
In recent years, however, Gower’s collecting has eschewed the material world in favour of more evocative things: meaningful events, conversations and places that have marked the world at large. After September 11, Gower compiled lists of significant attacks, invasions, battles, or conflicts which took place in the modern world between September 11, 1901 and September 11, 2001 and presented them on long sheets of drafting film. The ceaseless repetition highlights S11 as one event amongst millions like it, but rather than numbing us, the list becomes a body of evidence that awakens our horror at the human propensity for violence fuelled by religion, money, and power. Her most recent installation of lists, Conversations 1955 – 2005, and Sites 1980