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From the Bank of Hell

This contemporary artwork is an accruing (and unique) collection of mimetic paper sculptures manufactured for sale in Hong Kong, made as votives to be burnt in a ritual ceremony to ease ancestral passage through the afterlife. In 21st century China almost everything that is manufactured for the living is manufactured for the dead in this "ghost”, paper analogue form, from puffer jackets to karaoke machines, cosmetics, dentistry, laptops, Viagra.

'From the Bank of Hell' is an exploration into the segueing of sacred with the mythologising forces of capitalism, the relations between the material and the immaterial, and modes of the real. It extends an interest in technology and modes of thoughtfulness evidenced in the manufacturing process, and the ways in which things are prone to shifting conditions of identification and alienation. Objects are manufactured with wit and inventiveness, in their modes of construction and the brand names playful copyright avoidances. There is joyful synthetic and mimetic mirroring of luxury and high function in these inert glitter and paper analogue forms. The collection performs evolving relationships with the material and the immaterial in magical thinking, and its close association with the immaterial and material modus of the economy. The collection registers of the speed of assimilation of new technologies and habits into ancient practices, and shifts in the modes and objects of production, consumption and desire. The collection is to be extant only for the late capitalist period, and burnt as an offering to those who lived through it, at its close.

'From the Bank of Hell' is the inaugural exhibition of collected printed ephemera under the banner ‘The Maverick Press’. It has exhibited internationally at Arnolfini Bristol, UK, Turner Contemporary, Margate UK and ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany.