A Portrait of Bob and Barbara
Oak, London plane, Ash, steel, stainless-steel, stainless-steel bolts, riv nuts, acrylic modified gypsum, UV printing, 3D printed resin, fibreglass, PVC, Golden acrylic ink, cotton caps, polyester matt thread, MDF, various ClosetMaid shelving components, two slot shelving system, U-Pol Gloss primer, masking tape, photograph.
Dimensions variable
2023
A Portrait of Bob and Barbara is a fictional shelf from my grandparents’ garage.
I believe you can learn just as much about a person by the objects they own, the clothes they wear, the company they hold or the house they maintain. This is a portrait of two people in their final chapters of life and a fond image shaped by comfort, care, obsession and delusion.
To me it’s a version of the American dream. What more spectacular selection of objects to represent a life of comfortable success; to stockpile 2 or 12 months’ worth of household goods. Yet it also represents our fragility. An unstable and slightly surreal visualisation of memory loss; the inability to distinguish necessity from repetition.
“Do we have trash bags Barbara?”
“Oh Bob, I don’t know. Probably not - get more”.
In remaking these objects, their function has been removed. They’re solid. The part that the consumer needs has disappeared. Each has been painstakingly recreated — possibly in the most laborious way possible — reframing the idea of care as something both absurd and deeply sincere.
The work questions how we care for ourselves, each other, and the systems designed to care for us — while also asking what it means for these objects to care back, to hold meaning, or to remember.
I believe you can learn just as much about a person by the objects they own, the clothes they wear, the company they hold or the house they maintain. This is a portrait of two people in their final chapters of life and a fond image shaped by comfort, care, obsession and delusion.
To me it’s a version of the American dream. What more spectacular selection of objects to represent a life of comfortable success; to stockpile 2 or 12 months’ worth of household goods. Yet it also represents our fragility. An unstable and slightly surreal visualisation of memory loss; the inability to distinguish necessity from repetition.
“Do we have trash bags Barbara?”
“Oh Bob, I don’t know. Probably not - get more”.
In remaking these objects, their function has been removed. They’re solid. The part that the consumer needs has disappeared. Each has been painstakingly recreated — possibly in the most laborious way possible — reframing the idea of care as something both absurd and deeply sincere.
The work questions how we care for ourselves, each other, and the systems designed to care for us — while also asking what it means for these objects to care back, to hold meaning, or to remember.
Pineapple Crisp
Screen print on aluminium
150 x 110 x 5 cm
2023
Luv Yuh Much
Screen print on Somerset paper
Edition of 24 + 2 AP
35.5 x 22cm (unframed)
2023
Image: Abdollah Nafisi
A Portrait of Bob and Barbara
Image credit: Abdollah Nafisi
On view, RCA Show (2023), Truman Brewery, London