Wednesday, September 30, 2009

matthew coombes does grief.

Photobucket
Photobucket
today i stumbled across the interesting work of matthew coombes & his lovely 'non-therapeutic tools of grieving' project. as a further discussion of my previous entry, i find that grief (& the outward process of) as well as ugliness & disfigurement, are taboo in society. i've often heard that americans have a very unhealthy process of grieving & dealing with death; since i was born & raised here, i feel a little inadequate to agree or disagree, but could see how this might be true & how artists such as matthew may feel the urge/need to create as a discourse to this taboo.
my other interest in this work is the notion of collecting, especially in the case of the pictured tear vial. as a obsessive collector myself, i've long been interested in whether or not tears can be collected & i love the idea of this, in all of his victorian grandeur.
i also recommend taking a peek at the interview matthew did regarding grief & his works here.

3 comments :

danielle v. said...

yes! send me one!

Renee said...

People are only interested in your grief if it is no longer than five minutes.

Renee xoxo

Gwendala said...

I tried to capture my friends tears for a project once and it was hard, my empathy got the best of me and I realize now possibly they should have don it them selves