SCOTT MYLES – MUMMIES
2014-07-21The word ‘mummies’ evokes not only those to whom every human being owes their life, but also, inevitably, the bodies famously preserved in Ancient Egyptian burial chambers. Named after ‘mummia’ – the tar-like substance used in the embalming process, and later prized both as a pigment and as a medicinal ingredient – these latter have often been resurrected in the cultural imaginary as the living dead. As such, they bear an uncanny resemblance to commodities, insofar as both embody the inanimate wrapped up and mysteriously imbued with life. The new works Myles presents in Mummies extend his interest in just such transitions or slippages between raw materials, social and economic uses of objects,and the complex psychologies that attend human relationships (including group and family relationships).
In addressing the processes of exchange and codification that take place in artistic gestures and in everyday transactions alike, Mummies frequently turns to the surfaces of things, to coverings, skins and exteriors. If the nineteenth century invented protective covers or containers for every conceivable thing (including the bourgeois subject, nestled within his shell-like home), the twentieth and twenty-first have favoured plastic, transparent, and skin-like encasements. It is these that feature prominently here, and are exposed and worried at.
Exhibition runs through to August 30th, 2014
The Modern Institute
14—20 Osborne Street
Glasgow
G1 5QN
Scotland
