Art Monthly
Toy, 2013
DOMESTIC RADICALITY
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Nowadays, however, you can easily end up with too many objects, and domestic tasks can become overwhelming. The US-based artist Susan Copich’s 2014 photo series, ‘Domestic Bliss’, for instance, satirises the angst of middle-class suburban life for a dissatisfied mother and desperate homemaker. The overburdened domestic figure at the centre of these images is uncomfortable and at odds with the things around her, while the men and children who also feature do not seem to notice or to care. These humans are, to an extent, at war with the environment around them, which consists of the things their income allows them and privileges them with, but which they do not seem at all at home with. The unhappiness that seems ready to explode in this series, and others by the same artist, is finding expression in the overabundance of objects, in superfluity.
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Bob Dickinson is a writer and PhD researcher based in Manchester.
12 Art Monthly no. 438, July – August 2020
