where i'm not afraid to use words like "utopia" & "dystopia"

Let the golden age begin/ Let the window down/ Feel the moonlight on your skin/ Let the desert wind/ Cool your aching head/ Let the weight of the world/ Drift away instead - Beck

Andrea du Chatenier's installation at The New Dowse is variously described as a "futuristic vision of a Golden age", "an era where ideals of real and fake are in disarray and copies sit merrily alongside originals...where the feminine ideal is a disorderly tangle of art history, mother nature and 'America's Next Top Model', and "a feeling of mournfulness with the seemingly glamorous figures made, not in precious metals, but low-cost, highly disposable polystyrene."

It would have been easy to skim the surface of this installation. There were a lot of pretty things to look at. Horses with white manes, butterflies liberated from their glassed-in, pinned existences, delicate flowers travelling over a bumpy surface. Yet, humming below the surface, I had to swallow a gulp. With all these gorgeous things lying about (an unmarked J'Adore Dior bottle, a pair of covetable fake black Louboutins, and a dusting of gold glitter) why did I feel as if du Chatenier was acting as a harbinger of doom?

Quoted text from Andrea du Chatenier's Goldenage exhibition at the New Dowse now until 29 August 2010.

♥ Photos by Rob and me ♥