Amy Wilson

Scour Power

Scour Power started with a magpie impulse. Something caught my eye – in this case, the shiny, pop-art-ish, pillowy aspects of dish scrubbers. I spot an otherwise throwaway industrial object, become intrigued with its distinctive societal, physical, or psychological signals, and collect more and more of that specific form. Fresh discoveries bring unexpected kinds of beauty. My projects feature multiples of a commonplace ‘species’; a sort of natural history of the margins begins to take shape.

Scour Power is the continuation of one of my key photographic preoccupations – literally bringing to light overlooked items circulating in the torrent of popular culture. This fascination started with an inventory of carpet patterns in Las Vegas casinos – Carpets of Las Vegas (1997), to studies of artificiality in Portraits Of Plastic Flowers (1998), photos of postwar LA apartment buildings – Drive By Shooting (1999), and pictures of the second-hand Ebay sales of Barbie, Ken and G.I. Joes in Doll Parts (2005), each project focusing on the indefinable qualities of mundane mass manufactured objects – especially items made of plastic and other synthetic materials.

Amy Wilson 2020

Amy Wilson: @amywilsonprojects

February 28th – April 18th 2020