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Good Teeth

‘Good Teeth’ (2008-2009) involved a funded period of new research (£7,000 from Scottish Arts Council), a production residency and solo exhibition at Glasgow Sculpture Studios (GSS). The new body of work that was produced explored the iconography of the automaton, the stimulation of desire within digital culture, ideas relating to feedback (positive and negative) and the pathologies produced by consumerism. On one level ‘Good Teeth’ restated and developed longstanding interests in our collaborative practice, namely an allegorical form of self-portraiture (‘Sanguis Gratia Artis’ 2004 P.S.1. MoMA, New York), ‘Glitter Island’ Tramway, Glasgow 2006), the grotesque body (‘New Meat’, Chapter Arts Centre 2004)) the pathologies of consumerism (‘Burgerheaven’, YYZ Toronto 2001) and the use of humour as a mode of critical engagement (‘New Meat’, Migros Museum, Zurich 2005). However the significant development in ‘Good Teeth’ was the shift away from the literal, visible presence of ourselves in the work (for example doppelganger selves in ‘Glitter Island’) towards the use of other motifs and forms. Previous bodies of work (‘Glitter Island’ and ‘Glitter Desert’) had utilised the allegorical potential of cheap domestic glitter, but had still been reliant on our doppelganger presence in the work as dandyish fops. For ‘Good Teeth’ we intended to further explore the potential of gold glitter but develop a more ‘abstract’ or ‘ refracted’ presence in the work. While the focus of research remained the pathologies of consumerism and their ‘blocs of affect’ (Deleuze and Guattari), we increasingly became interested in the dynamics of manufactured desire generated by digital technologies. The primary source for the work's theoretical research was sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘Consuming Life’(2007) and his notion of the ‘blase’ disposition, and the writings of the then blogger K-Punk ( Mark Fisher) and his ideas of ‘reflexive impotence’, later published in his first book ‘Capitalist Realism’ (2009).