Toys are revealed as everyday objects of an adult life; a modern life where objects are standardised and difference is limited, yet human intervention reveals that there are some aspects of the world that remain out of our control.
Imagine for a moment about being a child again (can you remember?). Games that lasted weekends, a bedroom full of colourful and animated objects, birthday parties, innocence and carefree days - no stress about money, work and a general day-to-day survival. Oh to be young again!
Walking into a room filled with Jones’ art work, one is instantly taken back. Large toy-like objects fill spaces and the experience of reacting with an life-size toy is rather uplifting. The feelings of childhood start to tingle in the body- not just because compared to the objects, one appears small and child-size again but also because they are familiar figures that are instantly recognisable. The longing for days immersed in a seemly real imagined world is readily felt.
Walter Benjamin talks of toys as an escape from the adult world. They are mass-produced objects that are based around play as opposed to work. He describes them as objects that “set off magical experiences, Erfahungen, venting a concealed reality subtending everyday subject/object commerce.” (Leslie 1998: 11). This may account for the instant attraction to Jones’ forms- his ‘toys’ are easily associated with childhood days, when money, production and financial gain was not a priority of living.
But Jones objects are not play things- they are objects of the adult world and without the naivety of innocent eyes, these ‘toys’ become signs of a grown up reality. The objects are ‘adult-size’, rather than minature- infact they are larger than life. Each part exaggerated, grown exponentially - a toy gun becomes the size of a bed, a lego tree equivalent to an Xmas pine and a duplo man, a literal size of a child- making one feel small and bringing significance to these objects. Basalla writes in his essay Transformed Utilitarian Objects:
To enlarge an object is to make it appear more important than it is…. Pop artists, of course, have made extensive use of the exaggerated and immense scale in order to call attention to the formal, the humerous, and at times the grotesque aspects of everyday objects. (Basalla 1982: 195-6)
And one thing Jones brings to attention is how closely they relate to everyday adult life and adult situations. The toy gun, seemingly soft and harmless, transforms the comfortable, snugly, kids bed spread into a very adult object. When confronted with this over-sized newly constructed object, the subject of the duvet covers imagery is highlighted; human destroying robots, so aptly named ‘Transformers’ their catch phrase ‘Robots in disguise’. Jones’ work takes off the disguise, revealing these toys as objects of violence. Something that seems to have been glossed over in the latest adaptation of the Transformer movie, where the former leader of the ‘Decepticons’ has changed from his robot gun form to a airplane.
It seems perhaps many toys can be seen as miniature representations of everyday adult life and objects. Basalla explains toys as being “a microcosm of the material culture of adult life” (Basalla 1982: 187). He talks of the transformation of utilitarian objects into toys, teaching children how to act in the modern adult world. Miniature shopping counters, petrol pumps and ovens, show children how to conduct their affairs ans are items they will more than likely manipulate and own as adults.
Jones’ toys exist within the adult material world. They reveal the role of toys as signifiers of work, material gain and modern day living. Larger-than-life size lego figures stand in a group in his work Fit The Mould, dressed in white shirts with a black tie and black trousers; working men- executives, waiters or pilots. Michael Paraekowhai’s Kapa Haka springs to mind. His fifteen security guards, standing staunch displaying authority, but not of their own, of their employee. Jones’ figures too are like everyday workers, and they are manipulated and possessed by children, reflecting the actions of an adult world. Like these modern day workers, the toys become a commodity; something that can be bought and used to its owners devices.
Jones explicitly presents his works as objects to be owned; a commodity reflecting a modern world. As art objects, he has a price on each- one can purchase these works and take them home for their own pleasure. And with their mass produced qualities, everyone can have their own figure or tree. This reflects all to closely on the capitalist culture of our modern world where toys are produced in large quantities and marketed to children and parents as new, unique and collectible.
These objects bring to light the all to common serial production of toys, and the differences that occur within repetition. He shows us that although each work is different; a unique name, a slight alteration in colour, the objects are fundamentally the same. From Barbie dolls to McDonald's Happy Meal toys, match box cars to teletubbies, the mould and structure repeats itself, and each subtle difference is treated and marketed as something new. Why have one when you can have them all?
Allan McCollum exposes the consumption of quasi-same objects in his repetitive art practices. Whether large concrete earns, computer generated patterns or small framed paintings (called ‘Surrogates’) each serially reproduced object can substitute the one before. Owens writes that while the variables of each of his surrogates can be seen as singular, “the potentially endless repetition of essentially identical objects prevented us from mistaking the difference for uniqueness.” (Owens 1992: 2) Jones makes it clear that the serial production of toys, (marketed as the new and improved), are essentially the same as the one before. As with many everyday objects we are not really consuming a different object, but the same object with subtle differences.
As Baudrillard observes … no object appears on the market today in a single type, but with a range of strictly marginal differences – of colour, accessory, detail- which create the illusion of choice. Consequently, what we consume is the object not in its materiality, but in its difference- the object as sign. Thus, difference itself becomes an object of consumption, and the agenda of serial production becomes apparent: to carefully engineer and control the production of difference in society. (Owens 1992: 3)
In this sense McCollum and Jones’ objects suggest that it is not uniqueness we are consuming, it is difference. However the agenda of Jones’ work is not about controlling difference, so much as revealing difference that are out of ones control. When viewed together as part of a serial repetition, differences become more explicit. Jones’ objects show the intervention of the human hand and reveal that even within serial repetition, there are uncontrolled elements. Through repetition, something unknown reveals itself and each object can potentially develop into something beyond the original- beyond the standardized stereotyped product.
Like Warhol’s serial prints, it is the systematic process that reveals the differences in Jones’ Fit The Mould. No two figures are the same. Hand painted, cast and fished, each work is subtly different. Paint has a range of thicknesses, hands are of slightly variable size and shape, arms are at marginally different angles and seams may still be apparent from the sides of the mould in places. Dyer writes when a series of Warhol’s work are viewed together, the differences are obvious. He uses the example of Warhol’s flower prints where while the basic design is repeated, no two of the prints turn out to look the same. Slippages in the colour or format make each work unique. “The structure of Warhol’s series is a structure of repeated differentiations. Here, the processes of repetition generates differences.” (Dyer 2004: 37)
Jones’ work Evergreen shows nature as something that also generates difference. It is not immediately obvious that each of these seemingly identical trees has a unique quality. They all stand at the same height, and of the same mould but a differentiating element is revealed when the repeated works are viewed together. Through similar coloured stains the wood grain of each piece of laminated wood can be seen. A ironic form, the trees have been taken through many processes of industry and manufacturing to result in a mass-produced, standardised and stylised representation of its original form.
Deleuze writes in his book ‘Difference and Repetition’:
The more our daily life appears standardized, stereotyped, submitted to the accelerated reproduction of consumer goods, the more art must become part of life that operates between levels of repetition… and reproducing esthetically… the illusions and mystifications which are the real essence of this civilization- so that in the end, Difference can express itself… (Delueuz 1994)
Revealed through these repeated works are puzzling factors that continue to perplex and mystify. Evergreen
shows the uncontrollable aspect of nature, and Fit The Mould the realities of human intervention as each seemingly mass-produced object is varied slightly resulting from its hand-made production. Jones’ re-introduces human intervention; from manufactured to man-made, and suggests that these objects have the potential to change and transform. Jones’ art works reveal that as our world becomes more standardised, more stereotyped and more regimented the simple act of human interaction can open up the potential for difference beyond our control.
References
Basalla, George. Transformed Utilitarian Objects, Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 17, No. 4, Winter, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc, 1982.
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, Presses Universitaires de France English translation, Paris; 1994
Dyer, Jennifer. The Metaphysics of the Mundane: Understanding Andy Warhol’s Serial Imagery, Artibus et Histoiae, Vol. 25, No.. 49, IRSA, 2004, pp. 33 - 47
Leslie, Esther. Walter Benjamin: Traces of Craft. Journal of Design History, Vol. 11. No. 1, Craft, Modernism and Modernity, Oxford University Press, 1998 pp. 5 – 13
Owens, Craig. Allan McCollum: Repetition and Difference, Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power and Culture, University of California Press, 1992
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