Shona Macnaughton: Vanitas Link Rot

Legion TV
24 January – 23 February 2013

A work that comes to be through deletion of its image.
Concrete path, a setting for one human skull.
An image that has existed to sell.
Crepe curtain flesh, a setting for a pirate sword.
A functional image which has been taken to highlight the Object.
Soft hazy leather, a setting for a violin with flamed maple.
An image in itself not intended for consumption.
Jehovah’s friend to scale, a setting for a Corel shell.
Intended to persuade the viewer towards consumption.
Anonymous amputated jeans, a setting for fruit and bowl cracked glass.

The object is at the centre but the subject surrounds the background and the text, it
fills the void of material, and makes the act of consumption loaded.
The domesticated ownership of things is where they are held.
These accidental still lives are the opposite of the Vanitas nature, they bear no
message, their intention is bare. It is clear what they exist for, they sell, they re-sell.
They can appear on this page but their presence is absent and exists as a hole, the
substance instead is layers of subject. Their context betrays them when they
disappear, breaking the Vanitas agreement. Click through and the hole become
tangible – own-able for a finite time, their own system undermines them: when the
link is broken they go. So then the image as Vanitas background must be strong. For
to exist as pain in loss there needs to be beauty, comfort, longing, love, care,
togetherness. The art product is fleeting and determined by the market transaction, it
ceases to exist when one of its parts, its collaged parts, is sold.

A script which lets the collage know it is at the end of its life.