My artwork entails transforming parts of vehicles that are consigned to a scrap heap into eye-catching and often garish re-workings of their primary purposes. This is done in the form of painting, using “craft” materials such as neon vinyl, glitter and other boldly coloured symbolism, showcasing both the necessity for glamour in vehicle representation, but also a distracting and brazen disrespectfulness to quietly dying objects. By removing them from this de-commissioned context, they almost find themselves to be in another life just through the movement of dying itself.
It also aims to critique the personalisation of our transport and questions the value of everyday machines when facing the end of a functional life, as this melancholic iconicism and characterisation acts as a diary affixed to the surface of the vehicle, honing in on this shrine of selective beauty; one that sees past a car’s designated commission. They start to explore time, entropy, ceremony, popular culture and a poetic outlook on obsolescence in everyday life.
- Everyday Machines by Katelyn Grant - 22nd February 2021