Here I talk with the multiple identity artist Karen Blissett about her most recent artwork Senior Management, An Inspirational Guide.
Blissett uses her anonymity to create an “open situation in which none in particular is responsible”, and to launch a guerrilla style assault on the administrators of contemporary power.
She has created a sequence of images that addresses viewers as senior management wannabes. A chilling sequence of managerial catchphrases, derived from found texts culled from boardroom exchanges and managerial correspondences, are displayed alongside images of besuited managers with flaccid penises spliced into the centres of their faces.
I was fascinated by two things: the work’s simultaneous banality and brutality and, given its at least superficial waggishness, its failure to circulate online. So I contacted Blissett by email to request an interview.
Read the interview published as part of the Lady Justice series at New Criticals, May 2014.
…”the current political oeuvre makes it impossible to act responsibly in society – this work is a poetic response, a symptom of one multiple artist’s allergy to the current conditions. We are surprised that people are not constantly vomiting with fear and disgust in rural ditches and the gutters of our city streets.”
View the work:
Animated slideshow for corporate display screens
Images and quotes for High Res digital prints – blog