Darren Banks
About this work
This large-scale sculpture acts as a pivotal point in Bank's on-going sculptural collages and investigates superstitions residing in popular culture and domestic banality. This work puts forward the artist as a conductor, a soothsayer or alchemist, channeling and animating these underlying anomalies and malignant ghosts within our accumulative culture. "In the exhibition's centre-piece Where Everything Is, an imposing mutant, moaning body is conjured from the synthesis of the quotidian and the Hallucinogenic. Banks is a skilled sculptural surgeon, expertly conjoining the most maligned pieces pieces of British domestic furniture (a wooden tv tray, a bottle green upholstered chair) with iconic signs of 1970's middle class respectability (a paper lampshade, cheese plant)with a barrage of looped video clips (Eyes without a face, Italian horror, porn and He-Man's nemesis Skeletor)......" John Beagles, MAP, issue 21, spring 2010. 'Where Everything Is' is a homage to Otto Dix's painting of the 7 deadly sins which Banks saw as a student at Pompidou Centre and was struck by its sculptural potential as much as its challenging content. In Banks' version there is a TV for each of the 7 sins. Sloth is illustrated by an excerpt from the 80's cartoon "He Man" portraying his arch nemesis Skeletor, Greed show's a lady drowning in gold from "The Devil's Nightmare", Anger is scenes taken from the "Abominable Snowman", Gluttony repeats a Pie eating scene from"Stand By Me", Lust gives us an endless orgasm from Linda Lovelace in 'Deep Throat', Pride show us a woman without a face after an accident from "Eyes without a face", and Envy uses a 'jealous mother in law' scene from "Onibaba" by Akira Kurosawa. An 8th TV show's us a scene from Cronebergs "Scanners" which asks "What happens after your head explodes?" Following the 'explosion' the TV cuts into a montage from "Bye Bye Birdie" in which Ann-Margret sings to us backed by various images of 'space' taken from Bank's wide ranging Sci-Fi collection. Nestled within the sculpture is a projector which beams a clip entitled 'with all the will in the world' from "Good Will Hunting" of a painting in a therapy room. room