Millie Burton-Home Improvements

Millie Burton's Home Improvements, showing at The Space

Audley House, Hove Street, Hove, BN3 2DE

Private View, including one-off film screening, Saturday 1st August 7-9pm

Exhibition continues until 25th September 2009.

View by appointment exhibitions@the-space.info

http://www.the-space.info/

“We are hopelessly seduced by the incandescent glow of all things modern, be it a flatter screen or a smarter plastic.”
Jonathan Chapman, Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences & Empathy

You can view images from the exhibition here

Millie Burton’s Home Improvements is a quiet observation of unwanted domestic objects left at a recycling centre. The series engages with the abstract problem of waste on a particular level by presenting images of easily recognisable discarded objects, by-products of technological advances and our ceaseless pursuit of the new. In most cases it’s not that these products have ceased to function, just that they have fallen out of step with their owners’ aspirations; the Sony Trinitron replaced by the latest plasma screen, the pastel bathroom suite swapped for something more estate-agent friendly. Desire quickly turns to disappointment and these once state-of-the-art objects go from showroom to dump in a matter of years. Yet, while the emotional durability of such products may be short-lived, their physical robustness means they will languish in landfill for centuries, even millennia to come. Huddled together in their multiplying numbers, these disowned televisions, sinks and white goods are stubborn reminders of what’s left when empathy expires.

Home Improvements was commissioned by the Pavilion Commissions Programme.