9th square, 1989

The General, The Prince and the Consumer
SAW Gallery, Ottawa
"garbage", eggshells, gouache, 111 1/4 " x 180"
photo: Terry Edwards-Frampton

In my combined roles as artist, mother and domestic worker I examined my family's social role in the context of consumer society. I decided to focus my research on the garbage we produced because it is a daily manifestation of consumption that is a part of every household (but which varies according to the socio-economic , cultural and physical make-up of each household). The process of analysis that I chose was to retain, store, categorize, and place in a formal, visual relationship(the installation, the 9th. square) all of the unrecyclable garbage that we generated over the period of one year. It was a family portrait of consumer culture in 1988. It was my first use of the Fibonacci numerical sequence to create the spiraling motif