Patrick Coughlin
Our relation and perception of labor, its purpose and value in contemporary society, has greatly shifted in last two decades. Information now exists at fingertips, yet as a culture we have collectively forgotten much. We live in an age of “scientific magic” where even the most basic processes of life are so removed from laymen understanding. Technology and globalization have created systems that make our perception and origin of material culture so opaque that we have lost the dignity and beauty of labor.
My work is both elegy and ballad, depicting the hidden beauty and value in the knowledge of process, and the joy of committing it. Objects of material culture have a history of knowledge hidden within it’s: form, purpose, and workmanship. By exposing the disparate perceptions of the everyday objects of our life I am refocusing the question of the role and status of labor. The work acts as an aide-mémoire of the dignity and beauty of processes and techniques that have been easily usurped by the empty glamour and effortlessness of modernity.