Curios About: Assembly by Edel Cox

Assembly
Edel Cox
Charcoal and Conté on paper, 70cm x 100cm

1. This work is about . . . the culture of mass production, and the cycle of extraction, production, consumption, disposal and reuse. The women attempt to assemble damaged and curious materials, in a process that appears to have no beginning and no end. It is also a sort of reflection on working a normal nine-to-five job, where the content is kind of strange and unrelatable to you. The feeling of being engaged in a seemingly repetitive and pointless activity that is never called out.

2. I made this work because . . . I watched that documentary Manufactured Landscapes, and I was also working in a crappy job. It was a joining of the two experiences.

3. I hope that when people see this work they will . . . note how it’s kind of unfinished and pretty rough around the edges, but will also appreciate that.

4. In terms of art history, this work . . . is a contemporary expressive drawing. Around the time that I was making this type of work, I went to see the Alice Maher retrospective in IMMA. I felt a connection between the darker, intensive drawings of “The Thicket“, and what I was attempting to do.

5. You can see my work . . . Mostly shoved into various wardrobes and cubbyholes around my house, and also at edelcox.weebly.com.

Curios [sic] About is a series featuring works by Dublin artists, curated for us by our friends at the Square in the Circle blog, and hosted there as well as here. Each artist is asked to submit an image of one work and answer a set of questions about it. We’d love it if you’d submit something you’ve made.