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Liquid Gold

#finalyear #Film #FoundMaterial #Memory #Metal #MovingImage #Sculpture #Sound #Water

‘Liquid Gold’ is an idiom used by people of the Rowley area of the West Midlands as a term for sweet nectar, otherwise known as tap water. It is also often used for petroleum, due to its importance as a fuel for transport vehicles. 'Liquid Gold’ features car parts in several stages of destruction, the engine covered in mechanic’s film to preserve its outer coating of condensation, the car door forever being rained on, and other components suspended in memory through ice. The project interrogates the found materials and ideologies of the West Midlands. Within 'Liquid Gold', sculptures dive into homesickness through personal narratives on the landscape of the West Midlands’ industrial past. Based on personal lived experiences and memories between the artist and family, the work confronts the nature of wanting and needing. This develops a real relationship between what is fiction and what is real. The work is obsessed with preservation and the unknown. As well as a term for tap water, ‘Liquid Gold’ questions the artist and all the things they have encountered whilst living away. The use of readymade materiality preserves the mundane as something tragically heartfelt and isolating.

scrap man klaxon

Scrap man ringing an klaxon to ask for iron shouting "scrap iron, any old black iron" followed by a jingle of sounds

Liquid Gold

A sun visor from a car containing an iphone 5 playing a video of streets in Birmingham, West Midlands. White iphone charger coming out to plug socket..

Liquid Gold

Installation view outside the cookhouse with a metal tray containing an frozen wing mirror and a sound piece wired up by a horn speaker.

Liquid Gold

Car engine displayed on an engine stand, with condensation droplets on the surface of the engine.

Liquid Gold

Black wing mirror with cracked screen frozen in a cube shape displayed in an metal tray outside the cookhouse.

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