‘My fellow Americans, hear
this. The empire crumbles. The backlash against our financial and cultural
expansion swells. The military is overextended, the economy is faltering.
Corporations and a powerful elite run the government, taking action we would
never conscience and provoking widespread enmity. Over-consumption and
carelessness destroy our environment. Science is running amok in the name of
progress. The widening gap between rich and poor brews resentment, which bubbles
over in acts of desperation. Something has to give, and will’.
Therese
Stowell marries the bombast of the Baptist preacher and George Lucas with the
rationality of science and business to create works advertising promise and
doom. Working within the language of
business and technology, she creates slick, seductive manufactured objects that
both critique and embody the American dream.
Stowell’s idiosyncratic work
resists literal interpretation. In fact, it should be viewed as an unsolvable
puzzle or even a riddle without a discernable answer.
It is the constructed systems of meaning through textual exploration and
the presentation of the information using the tools of science and business that
makes Therese’s work so intriguing and multi-faceted.
These systems frequently take the form of arrowed diagrams, which connect
words or sentences to create networks of explanation.
Whilst appearing complete and authoritative, each work ultimately proves
inclusive and therefore, ultimately enigmatic.
It is part of the human condition to rationalise our personal and social
existence and yet, fundamentally we understand the futility of this endeavour.
Stowell’s work exists between the uneasy realm of post-modern
scepticism and a meta-narrative yearning for truth and belief.
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