Clichés
Cliché phrases and popular truisms collected from the language used in workplaces, self help books, social media, crime novels and sports commentaries are incorporated into common home and office products to represent the ubiquity of this language and its filter on experience. Imprinted onto tea towels, tired language is put to use to dry dishes; on pencils it focuses on the centrality of the weekend escape within the shared experience of office workers. The language implies the workplaces where the phrases were collected and the objects tie the language to the activities of cleaning dishes, drinking coffee and writing notes. Fremantle Arts Centre, 2013
Phrases become clichés by overuse - their success as a communicative tool is compromised by the subsequent emptiness, limitation and insincerity. In the manner of an overexposed art object they become purely empty form and a form of social currency and transaction. Excessive use can also promise change and development through conscious and accidental manipulation. The phrases on the cups and posters combine and distort the familiar language, a basic impulse towards generating new ways of seeing, communicating and imagining private and public lives.